September 4, 2002 3:00 am

September 4, 2002  3:00 am
------------------------------

Please note: there are a lot of changes going into the game with 
today's patch. Some of these changes (such as the changes to 
resistances and spell stacking) will change aspects of the game that 
may make gameplay different. Keep this in mind when you log in. With 
system-wide changes like these it is entirely possible that there are 
still bugs. Please report these bugs using /bug, and know that we will 
work to fix them as fast as we can. But also note that some intended 
changes might appear as bugs (perhaps a spell no longer stacks with 
another spell). Feel free to report these as bugs if you are unsure. 
But please keep in mind the changes listed here as well.

** Petitions **

- /viewpetition displays the petition you have in the queue, if any.
- /deletepetition deletes the petition you have in the queue, if any 
(unless that petition is currently being viewed by CS staff).

** Keyrings **

We will be resetting all keyrings with this patch. This will mean that 
all existing keys in the keyrings will be removed. You will need to 
place keys back onto the keyrings. Keys are added to the keyring by 
using the key. The keyring is a part of the character, not a space in 
inventory. To find out what keys you have just type /key and the game 
will give you a list. If you have recently deleted a key, please 
contact your GM for a replacement.

** Experience Changes **

- We have smoothed out level progression from 50-60. This should 
mitigate the "penalty effect" that occurs in levels 51, 54 and 59. Note 
that it will cost the same experience to level from 50 to 60 as it did 
before. Also, death experience loss will appear different in some 
levels. This is an unfortunate side effect that must remain to prevent 
some experience exploits.
- We have rebalanced the rewards for killing NPCs for characters over 
level 50. NPCs that are considerably weaker than you will give you less 
experience. NPCs give more experience the higher level they are, and 
for the best results you should fight the most challenging monsters you 
can reasonably manage. 

** Spells **

- Fixed the "You have been healed for X damage" message. It once again 
reports the actual amount of damage healed.
- Added a message telling the caster when NPC can't be charmed.
- Fixed a bug with duration boosting Alternate Advancement abilities 
and foci that was only allowing the first 12 buff slots to be modified 
as opposed to all 15.
- Fixed a bug that was allowing focused and Alternate Advancement 
ability enhanced damage spells to do more damage than they should 
(meaning that both the Alternate Advancement and the Focus improve the 
base damage. The focus damage was never supposed to compound with the 
added AA damage.)
- Enchanter spells that have a hit point component and a stun component 
can now be partially resisted.
-The Enchanter "visage" series has had their recast time reduced to 
make them more useful.
-Shadowknight and Necromancer Drain type spells can now be clicked off 
by the recipient of the beneficial portion of the spell. For example; 
Shadowknights and their group members can now click off the effects of 
spells such as Torrent of Hate. While the target of spells such as 
Shadowbond can click it off if they so choose. 
-Torrent of Hate should no longer overwrite Call of the Predator

- Repaired some problems with Beastlord stat buffs - specifically that 
the higher level ones weren't always better than the lower level ones.
- Furious Strength made available to Beastlords at Level 54
- Dexterity made available to Beastlords at Level 57
- Stamina made available to Beastlords at Level 57
- Divine aura is now available to Paladins at level 51, instead of 
level 55.
- Harmshield made available to Shadowknights at level 51
- Augment Death made available to Shadow Knights at Level 60
- Death Peace made available to Necromancers at level 60
- Flaming Sword of Xuzl has casting time reduced from 6 to 2.5 seconds, 
recast increased from 2.5 to 60 seconds and mana cost lowered from 600 
to 250.
- Unswerving Hammer of Faith has casting time reduced from 6 to 2.5 
seconds, recast increased from 2.5 to 60 seconds and mana cost lowered 
from 600 to 250.
-Added a new line of spells for Shadowknights, Voice of Darkness. 
Merchants in Echo Caverns have been able to appropriate many of these 
new spells, but Voice of Terris has so far eluded them.
-Added two new Mesmerize type spells for Bards, one at level 40, and 
one at level 58. Rumor has it that Serilia Whistlewind has recovered 
the melody written by Sionachie, but has been unable to locate the 
transcript for the Dreams of Ayonae.
-Whispers in the taverns of Katta Castellum speak of recently 
discovered Ancient melodies. Brave adventurers search far and wide for 
the song of the ancient combine empire, and the Lullaby of Shadows.

- Higher level PCs will be more resistant to lower level NPCs' spells.
- Increased the number of spells that can be in effect on a given NPC 
to 30.

** Spell Stacking Changes **

We've made two changes to the way spells stack.

Damage Over Time (DoT) spells are spells that linger on the target 
doing damage. Until today two different characters could not have the 
same DoT spell on the same target. As long as one copy of the spell was 
active any new version of the spell would not take hold. After today 
the same DoT spell cast by different casters can affect the same target 
at the same time. Also, if you cast a DoT spell on a target and you 
already have that spell active on it, the spell will refresh. (Note: It 
will not be possible to stack Lifeburn).

This does not allow for inferior spells to stack along with superior 
spells. (Example: Two Necromancers can both land Boil Blood on the same 
target. However, Heat Blood, being an inferior spell, will still not 
stack.)

Several DoT spells that have debuff components such as Tuyen's Chant of 
Frost and Breath of Ro will not stack due to the balance issues of 
having several hundred points of Resistance debuffs on a single NPC.

We've also rewritten the way that spells stack with other spells with 
the same benefits (for example, to spells that give bonus hit points). 
Generally speaking spells may now 'bounce' off each other (neither 
overwriting the other) and stacking issues should now be easier to 
resolve. In specific:

- Warder's Protection should have considerably fewer stacking and 
overwrite issues. Thanks to the folks at the Ranger's Glade for all of 
their help in 'tracking' this down. 
- Druid Damage Shields should now all stack in the correct order. 
- Druid HP buffs are no longer overwriting stronger cleric HP buffs. 
- Harness of Spirit and Visions of Grandeur should interact a bit more 
sanely. 
- Existing effects should no longer be stripped off when the incoming 
spell isn't going to take hold. 
- Boon of Garou and other illusions now interact the right way.
- Spells that have both group and single target versions (and no 
special coding to tell them otherwise) now mutually overwrite each 
other.

** Resistance Changes **

We've made some fairly drastic changes to the way the spell resistance 
system works. Previously, there was only the smallest benefit to having 
resists over a certain value. We've reworked resistance in its 
entirety, completely replacing the old system with one that is more 
logical.

The idea behind the changes is pretty simple: Resists should matter in 
a way that makes sense.

Important things to note about the new resistance system:

- Resists matter more for PCs. There are now tangible differences 
between having 50, 150, and 250 in a given resistance, for example. 
Resistance buffs, bard songs, and resist gear have actual value, all 
the way up the line.

- Conversely, resistances also matter more for NPCs. Some NPCs became 
more vulnerable to things they have always been vulnerable to, other 
NPCs became more resistant to things that they were inclined to be 
somewhat resistant to. 

- Resistance debuffs should also have more value, all the way up the 
line. For the first time, resistance debuffs now have the ability to 
bring NPCs that were lure-style only down into the range of being hit 
by normal spells.

- The hard level limit involving players casting on NPCs has been 
removed. This used to be referred to in EQ folklore as the "Six Level 
Limit" (It was actually 1.25 times the caster's level, but more people 
likely thought about it the other way.) This means that in the vast 
majority of cases, there is at least a small chance that a person will 
be able to connect a spell with an NPC, even if they are out of that 
NPC's traditional level range.

- Overall, against NPCs that have medium-to-high resistances of a given 
type, expect to see more full hits, fewer partials, but more full 
resists in the new system. Taken over time, the damage done by PC 
casters to semi-high resistance NPCs should be approximately the same, 
but will definitely improve when the proper debuffs are applied (we 
wanted to make sure that this did not turn into a universal nerf of 
casters).

We look forward to seeing how these changes play out in front of a 
larger audience. 

** Line of Sight Changes **

- For spells that require Line of Sight (LoS), the LoS check is now at 
the beginning of the spellcast, not the end.
- Spells that require but do not have of LoS will now fail immediately.
- Harmful spells require LoS.
- Most Beneficial spells still do not require LoS.
- Bind Sight type spells do not require LoS.
- Any beneficial spell containing a Cancel Magic component requires 
LoS.

** Priest Changes **

- Clerics gain the Bash skill beginning at level 25. They will have a 
maximum skill of 125 at level 50, 165 at level 60.
- Clerics gain Hammer of Judgement - a level 56 summoned hammer with a 
powerful and frequent proc effect
- Clerics gain Yaulp V - a level 56 self-only melee and mana regen buff 
that adds haste, dexterity, mana regeneration and stamina regeneration.
- Clerics gain Ethereal Elixir - a level 60 group version of Celestial 
Elixir, the heal-over-time spell.
- Clerics gain Ethereal Light - a level 58 upgrade of Divine Light, the 
single target heal spell.
- Clerics gain Ethereal Remedy - a level 59 upgrade of Remedy, the 
single target heal spell.

** Sound and Music **

- We've started work on the sound and music engine. If you used to have 
sound/music bugs, the first upgrade today might help a bit. This is the 
first step down a long road. If your particular sound/music issue isn't 
fixed, please be patient. There's no need to re-report existing 
sound/music bugs.

** Items **

- Items now display level-restricted statistics besides armor class and 
damage as a red number with the unrestricted value in parentheses.
- Duration focus items now give focus message when a group spell lands 
on caster.
- Blessed Coldain Prayer Shawl has been given a minor upgrade.
- Small Cloth Sandals are no longer wearable by large races.
- Fixed the Plane of Mischief boxes.


** Pets **

- Changed Specter pets so they're able to equip items and armor.
- Pet-only buffs now automatically attempt to target your pet if you 
cast them with the wrong target or no target at all.
- Fixed a bug that would prevent the creation of Familiars and Warders 
if the caster had created more than 99 in the same zone during the 
current game session.
- The limit on the amount of haste that can be applied to a pet has 
been changed (aka. The Pet Haste Cap). The amount of haste that can be 
placed on a pet now scales with the level of its owner. The scaling 
occurs in a way that is consistent with how much haste a given caster 
can place on his own pet (using a Level 56 Magician as an example: The 
idea is that both Burnout IV and Muzzle of Mardu should be useful).

** User Interface **

- Deleting Spells from Spellbook: Storebought spells can be deleted 
from your spellbook. To delete a spell just right-click it to highlight 
it and tap the DELETE key. Please note: This does not convert the spell 
back into a scroll. You will have to buy a new scroll if you wish to 
re-scribe the spell. No reimbursements will be made for deleted spells.
- Item Links: When you inspect an item with Alt-Left-Click, the item 
inspect window stays up. To paste a "link" to the item you're looking 
at into your chat bar, click on the item's graphic. That will "speak" a 
link that others can click on to see the stats of the item, as if they 
were inspecting it themselves.
- Updated the /note window. The old /note command still works as it 
always has. But you can now use /note without additional text to 
produce a text window for entering note text. The /note command window 
should not break existing skins.
- Fixed a bug with the tracking window that was showing the sorting set 
for something other than normal for non-rangers (this was just a visual 
bug).
- Fixed a bug that sometimes caused a crash when zoning with the corpse 
window open.
- Added UI Label type #74 = Player Title
- "Reply to" will properly prepend a ;tell in front of names that are 
from other servers.
- Extended the "reply to" queue to 50 names.
- Fixed some aesthetics with labels. Percentages will never show above 
100 now (even during a heal). Corpse HP will always show 0.
- There will now be sound when banking coins.

** Bazaar **

- Added Focus Effect search parameter to the Bazaar.
- Items that are no-drop on other servers but tradable on Firiona Vie 
should now show up in Bazaar searches on that server.

** Alternate Advancement **

- Frenzied Burnout no longer makes the pet suicide after the buff's 
duration ends.
- Fixed a bug that would cause the Dire Charm ability not to reset if 
an enchanter used it when he already had a pet.
- Fixed a bug that was causing Dire Charm to not give the "this mob 
cannot be Dire Charmed" message or reset the timer in Cazic-Thule.
- Added the Quest Completion sound to AA point dings.

** Quests **

- There is a fellow named Moltak in Sol Temple. Killing him gives a 
negative faction adjustment with the True Spirit faction. BUT, if you 
have a very, very bad faction with True Spirit, killing him will also 
reset your faction to a more tolerable level. So don't mess with this 
fellow unless folks on the True Spirit faction are willing to kill you 
on sight.
- Made some modifications to the faction effects of the Wizard Epic 
quest.
- A powerful warder has been seen in the Skyfire Mountains. Those who 
seek retribution against Ragefire would be wise to speak to her, she 
may be able to provide information about his whereabouts.

** Miscellaneous **

- Merchants now display up to 80 items in their inventory. There should 
also be less delay when opening up merchant windows.
- The Help window will now be displayed on startup. This will happen 
only if it has never been seen before (since this change).
- Sirens should have female voices.
- Bloodgill Goblins should now sound like goblins.
- Several spell caster guild masters are now teaching magic skills. In 
Shadowhaven: Palomidiar Allakhaji, Loewnsaz_Waldalon and Lamukas 
Kaesoanls. In Echo Caverns: Kelador, Celerik, Wirgus and Yurian.
- Erudites of Prexus now start at the proper location. 
- Bards singing songs should no longer prevent group members from 
/split'ting coins. Only teleportation spells being cast in group will 
prevent /split'ting. This change was required to keep coin from 
disappearing if a /split occurred while a person was in the process of 
leaving a zone.
- Leather Padding can now be made from Rockhopper Hides.

- The EverQuest Team

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Source: Combined EverQuest live server patch archive, 1999–2010