Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Deathknell Flag Problems

Several problems with the Deathknell flags have been reported. Several fixes have been put into place, others will require a full patch.

Read the full thread here.

Forage for Everyone

A forage AA will be made available to everyone in the next few months if things go as planned. We didn't get the code changes we needed to make this work for TSS and it wasn't something that I could do for TBS.

- Nodyin, EQ Designer
The full thread is here.

Darkened Chanting Woodspirit in Plane of Storms Bugged

The Darkened Chanting Woodspirit is for the shaman epic 2.0. This mob has several issues that prevent a shaman from completing this part of the epic.
Thanks for posting. I've looked into it and it has been fixed. The change will be live in the next couple of days.

Vahlar, EQ Designer
The full thread is here.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Quest Fixes Due Next Patch

The Cleansing the Island quest requires that you say to the researcher "vials" and "special potion" for the cures and disguise potion to turn you in to the various animals of the island. He then gives you a stack of 50 cures and one special potion. However, the text never mentions this.
I've added information to his task text that mentions that you have to ask for the potion and the vials. This will go out with the next full update.

- Absor, EQ Designer
The full thread is here.

The Secret of Sunset Ridge? quest requires that you hand in the Sunstone Sun Charm that you handed in on a previous mission. Needless to say, since you handed it in earlier, you don't have it now to hand in.
Well that was pretty stupid of us. That happened because of a lack of communication between two designers (my bad).

I've fixed the Sunstone Savages task to not require handing in the Sunstone Sun Charm, but that will have to be updated with a full update, and I don't know when that will happen.

- Absor, EQ Designer
The full thread is here.

Charm Augment Removal Problem

I'm not sure if this is something new, but it seems like augments with extra text are not displaying solvent information.

I'll ask code to look into it and correct the display so that it displays the solvent type as well.

- Merloc, EQ Designer
The full thread is here.

Old Sebilis Key Problem

If you have the idol but don't have it on your keyring, it seems you can't go in. It looks like the zone in only checks the /key and not the idol.
I've been working on this problem most of today. I think I know what's going on and have a fix heading over to QA to verify. The problem seems to affect people who only have the idol and don't have it on their key ring yet.

- Rashere, EQ Lead Designer
The full thread is here.

Update 02/27/2007:
I can get a semi-fix in place without a full patch that will let people use the normal entrance again. You just won't be able to fellowship in until a full patch is done. I'll be looking to get the semi-fix in place today or tomorrow.

Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

Developer Chat - February 21, 2007

House of Commons Dev Chat Log - February 21, 2007

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Stacked Items Bugged in Bazaar

I saw something from a coder about looking into something about this.

It seems to be when the seller has more than one stack of an item, and to give the buyer the quantity requested it needs to hit a "second" stack, it does not count anything from the second stack in the money it gives the seller. From the note it looks like the coder found the issue.

I am not sure when the fix will go in, but I expect that it needs a patch.

Though admittedly this will put a crimp in peoples "AFK" sales... if you can just have one stack per item, it should keep your money complete until the fix goes in.

- Ngreth, EQ Designer
The full thread is here.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Guide to the Katta Castrum Portals

I have placed a guide to the Katta Castrum Portals in my EverQuest Wiki.

The Wiki is here.

The guide is in the Zones section. At the moment, I've placed a link at the top of the Zones section. It can also be accessed by clicking on the link for Katta Castrum. In the future, once TBS has been around for a while, I plan on removing the link at the top of the page but it will still be accessible through the Katta Castrum link.

A direct link to the guide is here.

Please feel free to edit or add to the Wiki any EverQuest information you have.

More on Guild Banners...

The "Banner Material Kit" and "Banner Dye Kit" are the items that are used to create a banner and place it in the world.

When you open the guild window and go to the "Banners" Tab, you should see a list box with a single entry that says "Standard of Honor". Just beneath that list box, you'll see a checkox that says "Show All", select it.

This will populate the list box with a bunch of banners that are going to be greyed out (which means you don't have the components to create them). Just beneath the checkbox you checked is the description window, which will give you a brief description of the banner's effect, as well as the items needed to create that banner, which you may then purchase those items from the two guild banner vendors in Plane of Knowledge.

The "Banner Exchange Insignia" are used to edit the settings (looks) if your banner. The more you change the looks of your banner, the more it's going to cost you by requiring a higher tier of exchange insignia.

- Maddoc, Assistant Lead Designer
Placing a banner requires 12 guildmates to be in the same zone within 150 distance units from the player planting the banner. If they're too far away, they will not be able to place the banner.

- Maddoc, Assistant Lead Designer
The full thread is here.

Veeshan's Peak Mobs Loot Tables Bugged

It seems the mobs are dropping cloth caps instead of their normal loot.
The appropriate folks are aware of this. Currently one of the crash bugs prevents us from even live-copying zones, so we will get it fixed as soon as we can. - Ngreth, EQ Designer
The full thread is here.

Guild Banner Bugged in Demiplane

It seems you can plant the Banner in Demiplane but when people try to use it, they get this message: "Current guild banner cannot be teleported to".
I brought this up with several people last week, we're looking into it. - Nodyin, EQ Designer
The full thread is here.

TBS Solteris-Progression Arc Bugged

It seems that the progression Combine Signet Ring is bugged in various ways. Read this thread for more information.

TBS Task "Confront Emperor Vaakiszh" Bugged

The Emperor does not reset on failure. So if you wipe or evac while fighting him, the mission fails.
Sorry about that. I have a fix for this and I'll check when I get in to work to see what the status is on this (has QA verified the fix works?) and figure out when we can get it out to the Live servers. The event can be completed now but just has issues if you wipe. - Nodyin, EQ Designer
The full thread is here.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Bonus Experience Weekend

Bonus Experience Weekend

Greetings,

We hope that everyone is enjoying all the features that The Buried Sea expansion has to offer. The team worked hard to focus on content and features that would enhance gameplay, while reducing the adventuring downtime in between. If you haven't tried it thus far, you can find information about the expansion here.

We would like to apologize for the inconvenience of the amount of server downtime that has occurred since the release on Tuesday. To help you enjoy this weekend, we are turning up the heat! Experience will be increased fifty percent on Friday evening and will remain until Tuesday morning [February 20th] at 10 am Pacific Time.

Enjoy!

~ The EverQuest Team.
The link to the post is here.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

TBS Port Spells On The Way

It appears that The Buried Sea expansion will launch without any port spells. They are going to add a wizard port to Katta and a druid port to Buried Sea. This isn't going to make it in time for the launch, but it will follow shortly afterward.

(Checking the official post on lifting the Beta NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement), it appears that I am allowed to relay this information since it relates to game content but I am not allowed to link it to the source or say exactly how I know. But I can tell you it is an official word from SOE.)

Update: I can now link to an official word on the ports. Also here is a developer post on the issue -
Prat made them all - ports, group ports and translocates/zephyrs. - Nodyin, EQ Designer
The full thread is here.

TSS Item Changes

Just to give a quick update here...

We weren't able to get the TSS item changes in for the live patch this week. It's the top item on Merloc's task list at the moment, though, and I expect he'll be wrapping them up later this week.

Rashere, EQ Lead Designer
The full thread is here.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Rampage and Other Questions

A while back there was talk of changing the "goes on a Rampage" message to reflect if it was single or AE. Is this still "in the works" or abandoned?

A while back there was talk of adding faction hits to Stitcth and Sothgar (if not all raid trash) to facilitate backflagging. Is this still "in the works" or abandoned?

A while back there was talk that the skels in non-instanced dreadspire were fixed on test to be non-see-ivu and set to normal instead of raid mobs. Is this still "in the works" or abandoned?

Enquiring minds want to know. - Prex_Atlane

1. Fixed and will go live with the next patch. Sorry for the delay. We thought it was done already, I'm not sure what happened with that.

2. That's in progress. Rashere asked me to look at the entire TSS progression arc and I'm going to be doing that over the next few weeks including these raids and faction hits on them. It makes sense to add "backflag" faction to the raids if you can 85/15 into them.

3. I'm not sure about that, I'll check

Nodyin, EQ Designer (02/08/2007)
The full thread is here.

Update (same thread):
AE Rampage will be shown as "Soandso goes on a WILD RAMPAGE" after the patch tomorrow.

Also, the dreadspire see IVU NPCs should be fixed. That change was done a while ago and the data will go out with the patch.

Rashere, EQ Lead Designer

Pets - "Thanks for the Memories"

A bug was introduced wherein pets would forget the NPC they were told to attack. This is due to be fixed in the next patch (February 13).
I believe the "pets forgetting their attacker" problem was introduced with the OOC changes which made an NPC forget about you 30 seconds after you left its awareness range. Since pets are NPCs they are also affected.

We've added a check to exclude PC pets from this calculation which should return them to their previous behavior. Barring any problems, this should go out with the expansion patch.

Rashere, EQ Lead Designer
The full thread is here.

Wizard Instacast Bug to be Fixed

The bug that affects instacast spells, you try to cast one, and if it fails for some reason, ALL your spell gems gray out for the duration of the refresh (10 seconds), will be fixed in the next patch (February 13).
As far as I know the fix for this is done and will go out with the Patch for TBS. If it's still giving you issues let us know after that. - Nodyin, EQ Designer
The full thread is here.

In Game Mail Purge Starting February 20

Greetings,

In order to improve the performance of the in game mail system, starting on February 20, 2007, we will be implementing a routine purge that will clear out all in game mail that is more than 4 months old. This will be an ongoing process.

To help players save messages that they wish to hold on to, on February 13, 2007, we will be implementing the new ability to export their email to a text file in the EverQuest directory. To use the new Export feature, take the following steps:

1. Open up the e-mail window (ctrl-E).
2. Select the messages you would like to export by clicking them in the top pane, using shift-click and/or ctrl-click if you would like to select multiple messages.
3. Click "Export".
4. The selected messages are then saved to a file in the EverQuest Mail directory with a name in the format:
SavedMessages_charactername_servername.txt.

This export will need to be done with each character that has mail you wish to save.

Thank you,
The EverQuest Team
The notice was posted here.

Patch and TBS Release Due February 13

On Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at 2:00 am PST (3:00 am MST, 4:00 am CST, 5:00 am EST, -8.00 GMT), the EverQuest Servers will be coming down a Game Update, and the release of The Buried Sea Expansion. The estimated downtime is about 12 hours. If further delays are expected we will make an announcement on the EQPlayers website and the official forums.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Druid Epic 1.5 and 2.0 Spells to be Fixed

The druid epic 1.5 and 2.0 weapons have been the only epics whose spell effects have degraded above level 70. This will be fixed in the next patch (when The Buried Sea expansion goes live, ETA February 13).
Yep, done. Changed the following spells to work up to level 75 before scaling down.

Nature's Blight
Silence of the Snake
Season's Fury
Serpent's Silence

- Prathun, EQ Designer
I am unable to link his post since it was made on the Beta forums. He gave permission for people to announce this despite the Non Disclosure Agreement that normally prevents anyone from revealing what is discussed in Beta.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

King Odeen Raid Updated

Last night [01/25/2007] we updated the King Odeen raid. The following changes were implemented. Please let me know if you experience any further issues, and thanks for your patience.

  • The issue that could cause the King to remain non-combatable while on the bridge MAY have been fixed. We were unable to reproduce the bug, but introduced changes that might have fixed the problem.
  • King Odeen should no longer warp from his location at the Hot Springs to the Bridge and from the back of the castle to the Hot Springs. Note the he will teleport beyond the front gate and the castle gate, and run from there (that's intentional).
  • Removed some of the basepop in the throne room.
  • Fixed the script that modified the King's resistances as he moved from area to area. At each area he will now be amazingly resistant to a specific type of magic (or two).
  • The King will remove all spells on him each time he changes locations.
  • Reduced the number of adds that the King calls while fighting at the hot springs. Note: we were not able to reproduce the reported swarming issue. This change should reduce the problem and may eliminate it.
  • The Wraithguard that protect the King on the bridge no longer summon.
  • The Wraithguard that protect the King on the bridge will give up the fight when the King surrenders.

Absor, EQ Designer

The full thread is here.

Guild Banners in TBS

SOE has posted some information about the new Guild Banners that will be in The Buried Sea expansion.

Here is the link.