Information in this and linked articles is being obtained during the beta testing phase. It can change. Some of it WILL change. Much information will be added at the last moment. There will be a listing at the bottom of this page to show what changes/additions have been made since the article was published

Druzzil Ro, goddess of Magic has been imprisoned by The Tribunal due to the actions of adventurers. The Elemental planes are badly out of balance with odd happenings. Given the name of the next EverQuest2 expansion, however, chaos should be expected.

Thankfully it isn't all doom and gloom, as Norrathians are able to explore the great library of Myrist, repository of Norrathian knowledge, which had been cut off from everything else for many generations. Even there, however, there are problems as a strange ailment has been laying low the custodians of the library.

Welcome to Chaos Descending, the next installment in the glowing (and growing!) tapestry that is the world of EQ2. This expansion will go live on November 13, 2018. As usual, I will be adding information to this and supporting articles until expansion launch and beyond, and things reported here from beta can/may/will change without warning.

Getting Started

When the expansion is released, the first thing you need to do is read your mail on a level 110 crafter or adventurer. Sounds pretty simple, eh? However, it has tripped up many folks in beta who thought they would be able to travel directly to the new zone, only to be told they don't meet the requirements.

• Level 110 adventurers who own the expansion will receive email containing a summons. You must accept the item that is within that mail and click on it to be transported to The Tribunal to face charges brought about by the death of Lanys. Speak to The Tribunal, follow the dialog, then be ported to Myrist, the Great Library at the end of the back-and-forth between Druzzil Ro and The Tribunal. This unlocks Myrist access for your entire account and you will be able to use any wizard spire to travel to Myrist in the future.
• Level 110 crafters who own the expansion will receive email from Ghida Borrell requesting their help. Accept the item that is in the email, and you will unlock Myrist access for your entire account and you will be able to use any wizard spire to travel to Myrist.
• Are you both? It won't matter which unlock method that you use. A zone unlock for your account, is a zone unlock for your account. I recommend checking out the summons at least once (if you have a level 110 adventurer), just so you can get a bit more lore and lead-in to the storyline.

In addition to the wizard spires, you will also be able to enter Myrist via a new portal in the Coliseum of Valor. The portal is located between the zones for Innovation and Disease in PoValor, and will deposit you in the Prophecy Portal Gallery in Myrist.

Getting Around Myrist

While only two floors of Myrist are accessible to players, the zone feels pretty large, and learning which teleporters to use to get where can be a bit confusing on your first day in there. Read more about Myrist, and important landmarks here.

Notes For Everyone!

Reminder! Custom UIs!

Various features from this expansion will require changes to different bits of the User Interface (UI), such as for mercs and mounts. If you use a custom UI, make sure to check with the source of those UI mods for updated UI components, otherwise you may find yourself disabling a lot of UI bits on launch day so you can keep training your merc, train your mount, etc.

Feature: More Mercenary Leveling

Mercenaries will be able to be trained to level 20, unlocking more accolade slots along the way. Merc accolades will be made by jewelers in this expansion, and new mercenary gear will be made by armorers.

Feature: Mounts - Leveling and Gear

You will be able to train your mounts in much the same way that you train your mercenaries. One mount can be trained at a time, and training unlocks more mount gear slots.

As you can see from the above, your mount tab will show you the current level of each of your mounts, and that new purple button on the bottom right gives you the second view above, which allows you to gear up and train your currently summoned mount.

Four rarity tiers of mount gear will be able to be crafted by level 110 artisans and will require not only the recipes for the saddles, hackamores, reins and barding, but will also require specific consumable patterns. Some of the mount gear will be targeted at adventurers, some will be targeted at crafters.

We do not yet know how we will obtain all of the mount gear recipes on launch. We do not yet know how all the patterns will be obtained, though we do know some. You will gain your choice of two tradeskill stat patterns during the tradeskill sig line. Some of the adventuring patterns are on various currency vendors in Myrist. The rest is up in the air right now, and this section will be fleshed out as I learn more.

We also do not yet know how all the extra barding slots are unlocked, although it sounds like one will be unlocked for those who pre-order the premium edition of the expansion.

Other Notes for All

There is no level cap increase for this expansion, but there are new tiers of resources to harvest, recipes for all crafting classes, 5 more levels of ascension for the level 100+ adventurers, the mount and merc leveling mentioned above, and questlines for adventurers and crafters.

Tradeskill Questline

Chaos Descending includes a series of 24(!) quests for level 110 crafters. There are no pre-requisites for these quests other than being level 110 in your crafting class and owning the Chaos Descending expansion.

The the main quest page for The Scrivener's Tale is up and fleshed out! There are also video walk-throughs linked in on that page now. There's also the Chaos Descending Crafting Rewards page if you wish to eyeball what you will get from the line. :D

Recipes, Oh The Recipes

The basic class recipes, as well as tinkering recipes, will be on recipe merchants. We have learned that you must complete the first TS quest "The Scrivener's Tale: Animating the Inanimate in order to purchase the essentials books. Advanced class books will be drops, as well as possible mission rewards. Mount gear recipes will also be possible mission rewards. Infuser recipes (artisan, no-trade) are chest drops (and hopefully in other manners as well).

For armor and weapons, "Student's" is the common/handcrafted label, and "Academic's" is the mastercrafted.

• Armorers: get a full loadout of level 110 common and mastercrafted chain and plate armor, as well as armor for mercenaries.
• Alchemists: Get potion and poison recipes
• Carpenters: get furniture recipes, of course! The carpenter recipes are all in, and ... zowie!
• Jewelers: get jewelry and merc accolade recipes
• Provisioners: Handcrafted food, drink and snack recipes are available, as well as one advanced book with 1 rare food and 1 rare drink.
• Sages: seem to be getting the lion's share of the recipes with ascension upgrades all the way up to ancient level for existing ascension abilities and the new ascension level 16-20 items
• Tailors: Cloth and leather armor, cloaks, belts and satchels are all coming off the tailor's loom this time around
• Weaponsmiths: Yep. They make things that stab, and slash and slice, plus things that you can throw
• Woodworkers: Wooden weapons, bows, crossbows, crossbow bolts, and arrows will be the woodworker's stock-in-trade
• Adorners: Will make a new ("Celestial") tier of white adorns using a new tier of adorning mats. There are also four new orange VII rune recipes that will use an ultra ultra rare "essence of chaos". Source for the recipes is unknown at this time. But wait, there's more! When the "celestial" stuff goes in, the distillation and dilution recipes (fragments to powders, powders to fragments, etc.) for the planar imbue mats also goes in, making it easier to do the Guk adorn recipes and the planar adorn recipes. While this may not seem like a big thing, since there will be a new tier of adornments, it will take time for you to accumulate enough materials for the celestial adorns and new runes, making the planar stuff still very useful.
• Tinkerers: Will be making a new batch of temporary adornments (potency, health, crit bonus) and temporary buffs (forcelink, painlink and powerlink) similar to versions available in PoP. There is also a charged item used to dispel buffs on mobs in the new tinkering blueprints.
• Mount Gear: While we know the recipes can be scribed any level 110 Artisan, we've only seen some of the recipes as tradeskill mission rewards so far. In addition to the recipes, you will need individual consumable patterns for each recipe. (Some patterns are TS quest rewards, some are status/currency purchases, some are dropping in mission chests.)
• Infusers: "Reconstructed Celestial Infusers" is a no-trade recipe scroll that I found in an exquisite boss chest. I do not know if it will be available from TS missions as well or not. The four recipes within are for Ability Mod, Crit Bonus, Potency, Stamina infusers.

Harvestables

There is a new tier of resources coming out with Chaos Descending that can be harvested in the four overland zones (Vegarlson, Doomfire, Eryslai and Detroxxulous). Since they are level 110 resources, just like the ones from PoP, they will jumble together in your depot when you sort by level, so a listing of the names is a handy thing.

• Den (basilisk lair) - nimbic hide, needlescale hide (rare)
• Ore (flecked mass) - silver fleck, golden fleck (rare)
• Gem (coalesced reef) - reef cluster, azure sapphire (rare)
• Root (strangler root break) - strangler root, casiun root (rare)
• Wood (fallen dewpalm branch) - dewpalm lumber, arborian wedge (rare)
• Food (celestial nursery) - deadly terrorfruit, wandervine fruit, strangler root, casiun root (rare), judicator palm heart (ultra rare)
• Fish (school of tangs) - flitterfin tang

In addition to going out and harvesting yourself, you will find that your Obulus Frontier Garden will give you a bundle of harvests that you will then manually unpack to choose either Plane of Magic (PoP) harvests, or Elemental Planes harvests (CD). NOTE: If this bundle stays LORE, you will need to unpack it BEFORE you try to collect from your garden the next time. (You won't get a bundle if you already have one in inventory, but it'll make the garden timer reset as if you collected from it. Get in the habit of unpacking them right away to avoid this!

Harvesting quests for the Elemental Planes from the guildhall harvesters will be unlocked with completion of the Scrivener's Tale crafting series, which will also give you extra resources on completion.

Your pack pony (which will also have a pack snail appearance that you can toggle on and off) does not know how to bring back resources from the new expansion, but knows how to do his Autonomous Harvesting trick if you also did the PoP crafting line.

Other Goodies

Again this expansion, there will be buyable furniture that unlocks during the adventuring signature line. Check out the 26 new house items. A video preview of these items is also available below.

Also again this expansion, those who pre-ordered the Collector's or Premium editions of the expansion got a building block set that goes well with the preorder house.

Video Resources

Both Mum and Ocarinah have been doing video tours of various goodness on beta. If you don't follow "EQTC Mum" and "Building Inspector" on YouTube, here's a link to individual videos. (With huge thanks to Ocarinah for doing these!)

• Monday Mischief - Just a quick soundless video showcasing Yrag the Swift (snail)
• Mum Tours Myrist - note that I want to redo this, time and energy permitting, as several spots in the zone got a lovely facelift since the tour.
• Ocarinah was busy while I was passed out after making, placing and screenshotting everything! She has done a short version and a longer, narrated version of the advanced carpenter recipes. As a bonus, she also gives you a quick look at the end of the 3 books that I received from adventuring quests and had plopped in the guildhall.
• Ocarinah gives us a quick tour of crafted gear appearances for Chaos Descending. (Note that with the leathers, the hood shown for the common leather is also used for 2 of the 4 rare leather sets, with the conical hat being used for the other 2.)
• Ocarinah has also put together a Long Version of the Handcrafted Furniture and a Short and Silent Version
• Elemental Planes for Crafters - Mum shows off the 4 overland zones, points out areas of interest to crafters, mob populations, harvesting recommendations, etc. It is a bit on the long side, but handy if you'd like to play tourist without the stress of being attacked while you look around. :D
• Ocarinah took a look at both the quested furniture items and the buyable ones in a short and silent video and a longer, narrated version. Thanks again!
• Last, but not least, are the video walkthroughs for the questline (these parts are my own division of the quests to make things more manageable, not any breakdown by the devs): The Scrivener's Tale, Part 1 -- The Scrivener's Tale, Part 2 -- The Scrivener's Tale, Part 3 -- The Scrivener's Tale, Part 4 -- The Scrivener's Tale, Part 5

Update Tracking

• October 30, 2018: Initial article dropped into place with information on how to access the content, notes on mounts and mercs, and the Myrist article. MUCH more to come!
• Oct 31, update 1: a few more bits of info of interest to both adventurers and crafters added above, and the placeholder for the main TS questline document added. More coming later today!
• Oct 31, update 2: added a Chaos Descending Crafting Rewards page for the impatient/eager.
• Oct 31, update 3: added blurbs regarding recipes. Beta patch notes are up, and it looks like Advanced Carpenter recipes will be patched tonight, but I don't know what time it will happen, so don't know if I will get them looked at tonight, or tomorrow.
• Nov 1, 2 a.m. Advanced Carpenter Furniture is in, and I'm just happily drooling over here, even though I'm totally exhausted. Enjoy!
• Nov 1, update 2: Added a video section above, linked in videos from me, as well as ones Ocarinah did of the new advanced carpenter furniture and crafted armor appearances. More will be added as time goes on.
• Nov. 2, update 1: Added details on harvestables. There will be another update later tonight/early tomorrow with the handcrafted carpenter stuff once it patches tonight.
• Nov. 3, "it is still dark out" update: handcrafted carpenter furniture went in with the 2 a.m. patch. I got all 41 combines done, placed, and invidually screenshotted, then ran out of steam when I went to try to image edit. Too many of the dividers have similar names, so proper images after sleep. To tide you over, there are now 2 pics on the bottom of the CD Carpenter Furniture page. I used the dividers from the opposite set of building blocks as background, so you could get a better view on the tile pattern being used.
• Nov 3: The icon images for all 41 handcrafted carpenter items are now in place on the carpenter furniture page.
• Nov 4: Added in links for the preview videos from Ocarinah
• Nov 6: Started work on the quest main page and sub-pages while the Daybreak network snafu threw a wrench in my testing plans. Check out the writeup for the first four quests to see an amusing image of Yrag with his new running shoes that I had commissioned.
• Nov 7: Buyable Furniture went onto beta today. I also spent a chunk of the afternoon with Gninja testing all 12 tradeskill missions. More on that in the quest article, soon.
• Nov 7, update 2: The quest page now has initial information on the crafting missions, and the mechanic that decides how you are assigned a mission each day.
• Nov 7, update 3: Added in some extra information for adorning in the recipes section above.
• Nov 8: A couple of FYIs as I do a lot of stuff in the background. The crafting quests will not have coin reward on beta to cover fuel, but they DO have coin tied to them for launch. Crafting missions are also being flaky on beta, but are fixed for live. (The changes have been checked in for the final build, according to Gninja, but it sounded like there won't be another beta build before then.)
• No 9 (technically) uploading to Youtube finally finished just after midnight, and the videos section above now includes an Elemental Planes for Crafters tour of the 4 new overland zones. Now you can get a basic feel for the zones as a tourist, without having to deal with the resultant aggro. :D Now for sleeeeeeep.
• Nov. 9: fleshed out some of the recipe information.
• Nov 11, before 1 a.m.: The 10th was spent on 2 guide quests on Test, 2-boxing another chunk of the adventure line on Beta, and redoing the ENTIRE 24-quest tradeskill line while recording it all for video walk-throughs. I'm not going to stay up and nurse the 5 videos through YouTube uploading tonight, but will get them into place after some sleep. I'll also finish writing the quest walkthrough pages after sleep. Sleep gooooood.
• Nov 11, mid-m*rning: Starting the video upload process for the quest walk-throughs and guzzling cola. Caffeine gooood. Also added in links above for Ocarinah's video previews of the buyable furniture.
• Nov 11, 11 a.m. U ... G ... H. My mic connection is a bit fussy, and apparently I bumped it, and all 5 videos are soundless. That sort of negates the whole idea of quest walkthroughs, so I'll have to redo them all today after I'm caught up on a couple other things. Bleargh.
• Nov 11, 8:45 pm: After finishing the adventuring sig line, I sort of passed out for a couple hours before dinner. Now I am back to working on stuff, and the next chunk of 5 quests for the tradeskill line are in place, and I've begun on the next chunk. I've still not decided what I am going to do about the video walk-throughs.
• Nov 11, 9:50 pm: The third chunk of quest writeups is done, and I did some cleanup for formatting consistency on the other quest writeups.
• Nov 12, 2:30 am: I went and re-re-re-etc-did the tradeskill line so I could redo the video walkthrough. Then I went and messed up the first segment and stopped in the wrong spot, made another little video to cover the oopsed part, and moved on to the rest. My attempts to tack them together worked, but I'd have had to redo a chunk of the audio, and it just wasn't flowing properly. So, once I finished the rest of the walkthrough segments (and completed my 19th run-through of the tradeskill line for various testing reasons*), I created a throwaway alt, buffed her up, and ran through the first 4 quests of the tradeskill line ... again. Given the time, I've decided that sleep comes before I upload them. They will be up sometime Monday, and the rest of the written walk-through are also on my plate. (*Yep, 19 full runs through the tradeskill line. Admittedly, two of those were for the site walk-through, but all the others were to check, and re-check things as fixes went in. Every time something was changed/fixed in the line, there was always the chance of unexpected side-effects, and since the questline isn't repeatable, that meant running another alt through to check things. Wheeee! ZzzzZZzzzZZZ)
• Nov 12, 11:50 am: Excelsior! :( Rest in Peace Stan Lee. Now that that is out of the way, the first of the five walk-through videos is uploaded, the second one is in-progress now. I don't want to have simultaenous uploads going in case I need to hop into beta to verify something. I'll drop in links once all five are done. If you are bored and want to start viewing now, you can search YouTube for "EQTC Mum"
• Nov 12, noon: I almost forgot! Be very aware of when you're collecting harvests from your Obulus gardens today, since you will want them available for expansion materials tomorrow. (Grab from them too late in the day, and you won't have the new stuff immediately accessible tomorrow as you wait for your 23-hour garden timer to tick down.) I also put in a bit up in the harvestables section about the Lore status on the bundle and unpacking things right away so you don't try to get a second one when you have one already in inventory.
• Nov 12, 4 p.m.: All five videos for the questline walkthrough are uploaded and linked into the main quest writeup page. I still have more quest writeups to finish later today, plus a master "shopping list" of resources and materials needed for the entire TS line. But later. I need some unwind time first. :D
• Nov 12, 9:30pm: The quest writeups are done, and I think ... I'm done? Except for merging the shopping lists from the various quest segments into a master shopping list. I'm sure I missed something, just as I am sure that I will be editing this and the related pages for several days after launch as we figure out what was added/changed between the final beta build and the live launch.
• Nov 12: A HUGE Heartfelt Plea: My work on these articles doesn't end here. I generally spend the first several hours after an expansion is live, running through the tradeskill line, missions, etc. to see what changed, or worse, what bugs may have slipped in over the last few days. I will be majorly focused on it. Please, please, PLEASE don't send me tells or Discord messages, etc. requesting that I provide you with details on x, y or z. Doing so will make you likely one of DOZENS of people trying to get my attention for handholding and spoonfeeding on launch day, and, well, I don't handle such overload well anymore. Please. Read the guides, ask in your chat channels for details if you can't find info on something, and so on, and let me lurk in a corner doing my thing. My scraps of sanity and temper will thank you. <3 (While I may need/want tradeskill related bug reports, things like crafted item stats you think are still out of line and such should go directly to /feedback, or /bug or the forums, NOT filtered through me. I didn't poke at stats. I have no time and energy to poke at them. Others did the poking, and trying to make it my problem may get you a rather grumpy and/or tear-filled response as you hit my last nerve.) Thank you for your understanding.
• Nov 13, 11 am: According to Discord, they are still shooting for a noon (Pacific) launch. Some of the patch notes are still being unearthed, and I will add them to the Chaos Descending Patch Notes as they get posted.
• Nov 13, 2:40 pm: The second-to last quest in The Scrivener's Tale has a bug in it (it was fixed, but the fix didn't make it into the build for some reason). You will not be able to finish the TS line until the next hotfix ("maybe" tomorrow?). I also added in a sentence in the Recipes section above to note the unlock requirement for the new essentials books and tinkering recipes.
• Nov 13, 3:20 pm: There will be a hotfix tomorrow morning to fix various issues, including the tradeskill line.
• Nov 14: The bug in the tradeskill line has been fixed. I've also put together a page for the Deepwater Building Block Set that came with the collector's and premium editions of the expansion pre-order.