Chalandria's Fang Scenario Active Again in LoN

I just went into LoN to get my five free decks this month and checked for this and discovered it is live. No idea for how long.

Chalandria's Fang is an item that will summon poison once every 20 hours. The poison for all level 105 classes except rogues is Chalandria's Bite XVIII. Rogues may get a different (better) poison, however this needs to be confirmed. Lower level toons (exact level / reward is to be discovered) get a lesser poison.

It is a Legends of Norrath Spider Queen scenario loot item. The Spider Queen scenario has returned. If you win the scenario, you get Chalandria's Fang as the EQ loot item. Chalandria's Fang and the poison can not be traded.

• EQ forum thread on how to play and win the item

This information is from http://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Adv...ndria.27s_Fang.

UPDATE: It appears this was for the month of May and is now over.

Some Self Melee Skills Fail If Nothing Targeted, To Be Fixed

From a post by Dzarn, EQ Developer, on the Daybreak forum:

Thank you for the feedback on this bug, we've been able to identify the source and will be working on a fix.

It looks like any melee skill that uses an SPA to trigger another spell ID will fail if the caster does not have any target before using the button, which is obviously not intended for self spell target types.

Daybreak, All EQ, Down Due to Attack

All Daybreak websites are either down or extremely slow. EverQuest is down. The reason? It appears to be an attack.

• Lizard Squad lashes out after Daybreak Games CEO threatens cyberattacker group
• Harassed Dev Tells Lizard Squad Hacker “I’m Coming For You”

Since the EQ forums are inaccessible, the only news is coming from social media.

Daybreak has posted very little information, only a few posts such as this post on Twitter:

EverQuest retweeted

Daybreak Games ‏@DaybreakGames 1:00 PM - 9 Jul 2015

We are currently investigating reported issues with connectivity both in-game and on our websites/forums. Thank you for your patience.

It appears likely that the game and EQ forums will be down for a while.

UPDATE July 10 11am EDT:  Two hours ago Daybreak announced that service was restored but then four minutes ago they said they are experiencing issues.   Access to Daybreak assets and games is still unreliable if not impossible.

UPDATE July 10 6:49pm EDT: It appears that Daybreak websites and games are up and running.

Crushbone and Permafrost Hardcore Heritage Extended Until July 1

Due to a bug with the raids, Crushbone and Permafrost Hardcore Heritage have been extended.

Yes, this issue is being addressed in the patch on Wednesday 6/17 and we're extending the end date on these Hardcore Heritage zones by a week so that they'll end on 7/1 instead of 6/24 and be available for a full two weeks. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Broken Anniversary Missions to Return Fixed in June

The 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th Anniversary Missions were reported as having issues with not working (see posts below). Daybreak has announced they will return (fixed) in June.

We've extended the 5th-13th Anniversary Events to July 15th (7/15). They should re-enable after the June update next week [June 17].

"Anniversary" Bug Affects Hardcore Heritage

The same bug reported for Anniversary missions (see post below) is also affecting Hardcore Heritage.

It has been reported that the Hardcore Heritage Crushbone raid is sending people to the normal Crushbone zone instead of the raid instance.

A fix is on the Test server to go live sometime in the near future.

- Corrected an issue causing players entering mission instances of some zones to be teleported to the non-instanced versions.

Still no word from Daybreak if any of the broken missions will be returned this year or extended (for those currently live) due to this bug or if players will have to wait another year before being able to complete them.

Some Anniversary Missions Bugged, No Word If Time To Be Extended

While the anniversary missions are due to end today, some have been reported as being bugged for a while.

When you speak to the quest giver and request to be sent to the mission instance, they instead send you to the normal (non-quest, non-instanced) zone.  This, obviously, makes it impossible to do the mission.

While Daybreak has confirmed these bugs and that they are working on a fix, they have not mentioned whether they will be offered again this year or whether players will have to wait until 2016 to complete them.

"Daybreak Week" Bringing 50% Bonus XP

From "It's Daybreak Week! Help Us Celebrate!":

EverQuest
Want to level up a bit quicker than normal in the game that started it all? Hop in to EQ for 50% Bonus XP, starting at 12AM PDT April 27th and running through 11:59PM PDT May 4th. 

Mercs Reported as Not Working on Balanced

Reports are coming in that, since the patch of April 22, mercenaries do nothing when placed on the Balanced stance.

DBG responded on April 22 to the reports with this post:

Regarding the caster mercenaries, the dev team has been looking into it since the initial reports on test but since none of the changes that were pushed to test/live from beta are directly related to the mercenary systems it's proven to be a bit of a mystery.
Regardless, we'll be poking at all the things until its fixed.

UPDATE:

(Professor's voice) Good news, everyone!
We've tracked down the cause of the mercenary weirdness and are working on the fix now.

A temporary workaround until we patch out a fix is to re-sort the stance list by clicking the blue 'Stance' text at the top of the Manage Mercenary window and then selecting the stance you want the mercenary to take.

Essentially the bug is causing the first option in the stance list to put the mercenary into 'Passive' mode regardless of what stance is listed first.

Thank you to all the players who reported the issue and mentioning that re-ordering the stances fixed it for you, that helped immensely in tracking this one down. 

FURTHER UPDATE:

*** Hotfix ***

- Addressed an issue where the first stance in the Mercenary Manage window would not take effect when trying to set it as the active stance. 

SOE Network Issues Continue into Second Day

Coinciding with the release of SOE's new game H1Z1, SOE began experiencing network issues on Thursday, January 15.   Issues continue into Friday, with the SOE forums still unreachable at times.

Players have reported being unable to log into EverQuest.  The SOE forums are intermittent.  Gameplay is also affected, with lag spikes and players being kicked out of the game.

SOE response to these issues has been very limited, with only a few posts stating they are aware of issues.  On Thursday night, SOE posted a thread, "Continued Login Issues", on their forum, however, accessing it is problematic.

The EverQuest Facebook page, which would seem a good place to update people since the forums are intermittent, has little to say other than a post made yesterday saying they are investigating.

The EverQuest Twitter account also has the same message, with no update.

The best public response from anyone at SOE is SOE President John Smedley's Twitter account, which is stated to not represent SOE and seems to be focused only on H1Z1.

It appears that the launch of H1Z1 is the cause of this problem, since most or all of SOE's games share the same network and login servers.  However, SOE's lack of communication makes it difficult to know for sure.

Arx Mentis Ornament Prices to Drop, Will Appear in Raid Chests

From a post by Roshen, EQ Community Manager, on the SOE EQ forum:

Hey all,

Thanks for your feedback on the Arx Mentis Ornaments. We do want these to be exclusive and a neat bonus for raiders, but we don't want them to be so rare that you never see anyone wearing them.

The price on the Arx Mentis Ornament pieces are being adjusted on Researcher Orbiana. We're bringing Arx Energy Crystals prices down on these cosmetic items, and scaling them a bit. For example boots will be cheaper than a chest or robe.

We're also adding these to Arx Mentis raid chests. : )

Additional information:

 The current plan is to add this as an additional drop to the raid chest for Arx Mentis raid encounters.

Wizard Mercenaries To Be Fixed Next Patch

SOE forum post by Elegist, EQ Developer:

The issue with caster DPS mercs not attacking NPCs with high HP has been fixed. Also, the issue with the caster DPS mercs not moving into casting range if they are too far away has been fixed. These changes should go out with the next patch.

Level 101+ Pre-CotF Content XP Nerf and New Lockouts

From a post by Roshen, SOE Community Relations, on the SOE forum:

As we move into The Darkened Sea, we've made a few changes to ensure that adventuring in the newest content will be the best way to gain experience to advance their characters in both levels and AA points. Playing in the newest content should always be the most attractive, and demolishing content from several expansions ago should not be the fastest way to advance your character.

Once you hit level 101, content released prior to Call of the Forsaken will grant less experience. This includes tasks, rewards, and farming NPCs. If you’re currently planning on banking rewards and tasks from pre-Call of the Forsaken content to help level through The Darkened Sea, you will likely find the rewards to be less-than-awesome once you ding 101. We encourage you to participate in the newest content, and find places in The Darkened Sea to adventure with your friends.

Each Heroic Adventure Will Have a 6-Hour Lock Out

Heroic Adventures are great because they offer scaling content to players of a variety of levels. This content has a long shelf life for players since it can be accessed by players of a wide range of levels.

It’s not really a fun experience to sit in one Heroic Adventure for hours and days at a time, grinding experience to advance a character. Adventure is all about going out into the world of Norrath and doing things! To address this, once The Darkened Sea launches we have placed a lock out of 6-hours on each Heroic Adventure. Our goal is to reward players that explore more of the content, without punishing the players that prefer running a few Heroic Adventures a day with their friends.

We wanted to let you all know about this prior to the launch of The Darkened Sea, so you can start planning how to spend your time in this expansion. We’re excited about the 21st expansion to EverQuest launching on November 11th, 2014 and we hope you are too!

If you’re an All-Access member, you can purchase and play this expansion two weeks early (starting on Tuesday, October 28) and you can take 10% off your purchase of either the Standard or Collector’s Edition of The Darkened Sea!

A number of questions remain on this issue.  See the post to give your feedback and see any replies by SOE.

Note: Roshen updated his initial post to clarify some things.  I have changed the quote above to match.

SOE Network Issues (10/15/14)

SOE forum and logins are not functioning.  Also, some game servers are down.

SOE is aware there are issues.  You can see their updates on it on EQ's Facebook page and their Twitter account.

Some Items to Get Increased Focus Level with TDS

From a SOE forum post by Chandrok, EQ Developer:

The Bloodstained shoulders focus will be upgraded to 105 with the launch of TDS [The Darkened Sea expansion]. CotF [Call of the Forsaken] top tier focus effects will also be extended to level 103.

Large Currency Item "Nobles" To Be Added

Nobles are a new alternate currency type expected to be added in the game in September 2014.  The purpose of Nobles is to enable large money transactions, where the Platinum piece is not enough.  They will be worth the equivalent of 100,000 platinum and Nobles will stack up to 20. They're intended primarily as a way for players to transfer larger amounts of money than the system can currently allow otherwise.

Details on Nobles may change before or after being added to the game.  SOE is currently seeking player input on them.  See this thread on the SOE forum for more information and to give feedback.

No More Pre-Order for Expansions?

It appears that SOE will not have pre-orders for The Darkened Sea.

From this SOE forum post by Elidroth Renato (Doug Cronkhite), Asst. Lead Designer:

Pre-orders actually come from the days when we made a physical box that went on brick and mortar store shelves. We needed to get some idea of how many to manufacture so we didn't have thousands of customers without product, or have thousands of boxes sitting on shelves taking up space that places like Target, Gamestop, and Wal-Mart charge you money for.

Since we've moved to a completely digital product, there is no reason for pre-orders, AND it resolves the account issues that invariably happen every year of someone pre-ordering, our systems giving access to things, only to have their credit card fail processing for whatever reason (typos, denials, etc) and then losing ALL access to their account due to the system backing out the pre-order.

So this year, we've moved to a different system, with All Access members having the opportunity of getting in 2 weeks ahead of FTP players. Oct 28th, All Access players buy the expansion, and are in, immediately. FTP players can then buy the new expansion on Nov 11th. At least I think those are the dates.. I'll check again in the morning when I get to work. End result is a MUCH cleaner system and process with much less chance of problems. 

Call of the Forsaken Tier 2 Raid Loot Tables Changed

For Call of the Forsaken Tier 2 raids:

• Tower of Rot: Lord Kyle Bayle
• Argin-Hiz: Burn Out
• The Void (H): The Journey Home 

"One of the changes that was made in CotF Tier 2 was that only the 5 most used gear lines will drop now. The other lines are still available to purchase on the merchant."

— Chandrok, EQ Developer

The quote is part of this thread on the SOE forums.

Crashing? SOE Wants To Know

From the SOE forum:

Hello Norrathians!

We are currently looking into a potential issue with the game client that is causing crashing and client freezing for some players. If you are currently experiencing this kind of issue, we would like to collect some information from you in order to have these problems addressed. To do this, please open a support ticket with us at http://help.soe.com and include the following:

1. A dxdiag and msinfo file from your system (instructions on how to create these files can be found here: http://help.soe.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/28973 )
2. Are you currently using any custom user interface (UI) add-ons?
3. What zone are you currently encountering these issues in?
4. What server do you currently play on?
5. How long have you been experiencing these issues?

Once your ticket has been submitted please either send me a private message with your ticket number, or post the ticket number as a response to this thread.

As always, if you have any additional questions in the mean time, please let me know and I'll be happy to help.

Thank you!

Memorial Day Weekend Double XP

From a post by Roshen, EQ Community Relations, on the SOE forum:

Get ready to enjoy a 3-day double experience weekend and discounts on some great cosmetic items from the Marketplace!

Starting on Friday, May 23, 2014 at 12:01 PM PDT* and running until Monday, May 26, 2014 at 11:59 PM PDT* players will earn double experience! There will also be an up to 30% discount on the following categories in the Marketplace: Mounts, Armor Visuals, and Character Illusions.