May 8th, 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

April 19th, 3:00 pm
------------------------------

The Minneapolis Fan Faire will be held on June 15-16 and registration has now opened!
Once again, we expect this event to sell out, so don't delay in reserving your spot 
and your room! Visit http://everquest.station.sony.com/fanfaire/ to register or for 
more information!

- The EverQuest Team



April 19th, 3:00 pm
------------------------------

** Emergency Patch **

We had an emergency patch this morning in an attempt to solve issues with the servers crashing over the last few days. These server crashes have been very brief, but understandably annoying. We apologize for the inconvenience, but we're doing the patching early today in an attempt to get things fixed for prime time this evening.

- The EverQuest Team



April 17th, 5:00 pm
------------------------------

** Emergency Patch Update **

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.


** 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.



April 17th, 1:00 pm
------------------------------

** Cosmic Rift Enters Beta Testing **

Sony Online Entertainment's latest massively multiplayer game Cosmic Rift enters open beta testing today, April 17. Cosmic rift is a multiplayer space action game where you take command of a star fighter and wage war with hundreds of other players. To take part in the beta testing, visit the Cosmic Rift web page (at http://cosmicrift.station.sony.com/) to get started.



*** Patch Message Addendum ***

Just a few notes to clear up some questions and some errors in the patch message.

** 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.



April 17th, 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 Chestplate 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.