I started w*rk this week on a project that I have wanted to tackle for welll over a year now. (I kept getting sidetracked by "minor things" such as the tradeskill revamp, and all the changes to stats that we have seen on armor and weapons, and so forth.) I have done a brain-dump, and my brain is now extra-cripsy, I suspect ... at least what little is left of it that didn't already ooze out my ears!

That means it is time to ask the community for help! No, no, not to find me a new brain (the body shop says it is backordered). Help with the guides before I link them into the Tradeskill Guides section of the site.

Over in the Tradeskill Guides Submissions forum are a couple posts by me. I could use proofreading and accuracy help on the Essentials guides (craftsman and scholar were written in the last day-ish), and on the armor progression chart (which has now expanded to be a whimper for help with both armor and weapons).

January 23, 2007 - More Incoming Changes

Ilucide has been hard at work cleaning up some of the many tradeskill bugs and issues, and responded to a thread over on the SoE forums with a long list of answers, as well as sneak peeks at what is incoming. I strongly, strongly recommend everyone read the information carefully. As an example of one of the many things in the thread, I found this gem hiding in there:

• Scout combat arts now properly use Solidifed Loam for level 1-9 adept III recipes.
• Mage spell scrolls now properly use Copper Clusters for level 1-9 adept III recipes.
• Scout combat arts now properly use Alkaline Loam for level 10-19 adept III recipes.
• Mage spell scrolls now properly use Silver Clusters for level 10-19 adept III recipes.

(edited to fix T2 loam name)

January 19, 2007 - Game Update 31 Preview

EQ2 Players has a sneak peek at game update 31. On top of new ways to handle enemy masteries, and some enhancements to the broker system, I found this little nugget mentioned:

We also have a treat for those who prefer to show off their stylish houses. The Frostfell fireplaces proved to be incredibly popular with the terminally house-proud, so carpenters will soon be able to make fireplaces all year round!

January 14, 2007 - Frostfell ends Tuesday the 16th!

Reprinted from the SoE forums:

On Tuesday, January 16th, Frostfell will be officially over. The game servers will be updated and returned to their regularly scheduled glory.

1. If you logged out in any of the Frostfell zones before the server update, you will log back in either to your home town, or the docks at Thundering Steppes. If the many convenient transportation options at the Thundering Steppes don't suit your preferences, don't forget that you can use your "Call of..." (insert home city of choice) ability to recall to your home town in rapid fashion.
2. You will retain your Frostfell recipes and materials for the next time the Frostfell crafting stations make their return!
3. Any unfinished Frostfell quests you may have will be cleared from your quest journal.

December 26, 2006 - 2007 Gaming Calendar to Benefit St. Jude Children\'s Hospital

I received this in a PM last night, and given where 100% of the proceeds are going, I felt it deserved some front page airtime.

MMO Portal Launches the Sale of MMO Calendar 2007 to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

This unique 12-month calendar features the original artwork of some of today's hottest and most anticipated upcoming MMOs, each dedicated to its own month. As if that is not exciting enough, the artwork has been signed by the developers of your favorite games as well!

• Dark Age of Camelot
• Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach
• Eve Online
• EverQuest II
• Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising
• Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
• Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided
• The Chronicles of SpellBorn
• Ultima Online
• Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
• World of Warcraft

All of the development teams have been simply amazing to work with in putting this together and fully support the incredible work St. Jude does every day. Join us in the fight to save our children and get your MMO Calendar today!

December 26, 2006 - Frostfell Tips for Cooks

The Frostfell season is well underway, and will continue into the new year. Join 'Mum as she gives the folks over at Ten Ton Hammer some "Frostfell Tips for Chefs"

December 22, 2006 - Bonus XP Time!

The patch notes today included the following:

• In the spirit of Frostfell giving, we'd like to announce that there's a 20% added Experience Bonus in play until the new year! Adventurers and Artisans alike, from levels 1 to 60, will be gaining this special holiday bonus automatically. Happy Frostfell!

December 21, 2006 - Frostfell Furnishings

A few things changed (for the better) with Frostfell furniture items between the time of my Frostfell Preview article last week, and when the items went live yesterday. I have now updated the Frostfell 2006 Furnishings Guide with not only more/better screenshots, but also with details on status, special effects and so on. I have also started work on a separate fashion page for the Frostfell 2006 Wearables, though it still needs a bit more work once I make the male outfits and set them up with a model. Enjoy! (edited to fix fashion link)

December 20, 2006 - Frostfell is Here!

From the patch notes today:

*** Frostfell is Here! ***

• Visit the Gigglegibber Gh'lad Tydingz in South Freeport, North Qeynos or Kelethin for some holiday quests and the chance to earn a Frostfell tree and wreath.
• Enter the Magic Closet in Qeynos Harbor, West Freeport, Haven, or Kelethin to travel to the Frostfell Wonderland Village. Here you can gather presents to craft wondrous Frostfell goodies, see if reindeer really know how to fly, purchase Frostfell goods, and even assist Mr. McScroogle in an important task. And don't forget to log in each day and claim your extra-special Frostfell present from everyone's favorite Frostfell elf Gardy Giftgiver!
• And that's not all! Frostfell Candy Cane Grab 'n Tag is coming soon! Watch this space for details!

December 20, 2006 - Update on EQ2 Bannings, etc.

edit: We do not yet have patch notes for GU30, but it appears to be going onto the servers now. Soffrina (Community Relations - France) got a post out to the SoE forums just now:

All servers will be down on 12/20/2006 at 7:00 AM PST for an extended time of 4 hours. The original downtime was 7 am to 9 am PST, and we are extending the downtime to 11 am PST.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

For those who want some reading material while we are waiting for all our wonderful fireplaces and other Frostfell goodies, Scott Hartsman posted a note today regarding recent efforts to ban botters, plat sellers, etc.:

The question comes up every now and again: "Why doesn't SOE do something about botters/spammers/etc?" Whenever you see someone new doing things like this while playing, I know as well as you do that it's just plain annoying, and it can sometimes seem like we don't do anything about the problem.

Yesterday we did another cleanup round, removing all the characters that belonged to those who've been banned for a variety of EULA violations over the past few months. Usually these are the people who've been found botting, exploiting, spamming, or selling.

The total came out to just under 50,000 characters and scores of guilds that will be rolling off of the EQ2players site over the next day or two as updates to the web site occur.

I'd like to extend my congratulations to the CS investigation team and their management, who do more, faster in keeping this game as clean as they can than I've ever seen in any online game.

There's still more work to do in minimizing the negative impact of botters and spammers, and there always will be. For now, though, I hope you can join me in saying thank you.

- Scott

____

Scott Hartsman

Senior Producer, EverQuest II

December 15, 2006 - Have Yourself a Merry Little Frostfell

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A mellow baritone can be heard singing "Have yourself a merry little Frostfell ..." Then, a horrible SKRRREEAAAATTTCCHHH can be heard, before there is dead silence for a moment. A tiny halfling woman, bedecked in a green and red dress, and a red Frostfell cap strides out. "No, no, NO!! I've had enough with the little jokes. I am little, this Frostfell is most definitely NOT LITTLE!" To see what Mum is raving about, step into the magic closet, and see for yourself what Frostfell has in store for the people of Norrath.

December 12, 2006 - SoE Network Issues

I know a lot of folks are screaming because they are having problems accessing and/or staying connected to the game, problems with the SoE forums, etc. and are demanding an ETA. Breathe, folks. The people who could post the ETA are likely still unable to even access their at-w*rk email, much less their forums to give an update. Something went sort of ... askew ... with their internal network over there, and it is impacting access to the games and their forums as well. It looks like things are recovering now, but be patient with the issues - they are trying to get it all sorted out as fast as possible.

December 05, 2006 - Patch Notes, Kinda Sorta

These patch notes went up on Test server yesterday, and while there are still no patch notes up for the Live servers regarding the patch that went live today, I am going to make an edumacated guess that the following is what is on Live servers now:

*** Gameplay ***

• Guardians, Berserkers, Paladins, Shadowknights, Templars, Inquisitors: 5% Avoidance
• Assassin, Ranger, Brigand, Swashbuckler, Dirge, Troubador, Defiler, Mystic: 10% Avoidance
• Warden, Fury, Monk, Bruiser: 15% Avoidance
• Wizard, Warlock, Coercer, Illusionist, Necromancer, Conjurer: 24% Avoidance

*** Trials ***

*** Tradeskills ***

• Infusions of Nightmares and Daydreams should now work correctly.
• Secondary tradeskills will no longer give experience for the primary tradeskill.

*** Items ***

Edit: There is some maintenance being done to the login servers until noon Pacific today. Expect random issues with logging in, zoning, etc., as well as things like the patch notes saying the servers are down when they are up, etc.

November 27, 2006 - Tricksy, Tricksy!

Sneaky devs, yes they are, Precious! {grins}

Some of you might remember a chance comment by a dev many months ago that indicated that the secondary tradeskills would be skill capped by whichever was higher - your tradeskill level or your adventuring level. Because it was said well before beta for the expansion, and didn't materialize during beta, we all assumed that it was changed to work only off the tradeskill level.

We assumed wrong.

It slipped in on Friday, it seems, without any patch notes mentioning it, but your secondary tradeskill (tinkering or transmuting) is now skill capped either your adventuring level or your crafting level (whichever is higher.)

November 17, 2006 - Tiny Patch Update

From today's patch notes:

• Consignment Jewelry Boxes can now hold Cloaks.

November 14, 2006 - Fae Liftoff Countdown In Progress!

Today marks the release of eagerly-awaited Echoes of Faydwer expansion!

Those of you who have been playing online games for quite a while are likely used to the routine when it comes to expansion launch days - go find something else to do for a few hours - work on your spouse/sweetheart/family faction, clean your computer area, etc.

For those new-ish to expansion day brouhaha, today is the day where you hurry up and wait. This expansion is beyond ginormous, and anything that is the product of this many untold thousands of hours of development takes time to be settled happily onto the servers. The most recent estimate I heard was an ETA of 12 hours (the patch started at 4 a.m., Pacific).

As with all undertakings of this size, things can and likely WILL go wrong, and I expect we'll see more than one emergency hotfix or patch this week to fix something that just didn't like the move from a testing to a Live environment. So, take a deep breath or three, accept that there will be some chaos, and that it isn't all an intentional plot to make your life miserable. {grin} (If that doesn't keep you from flying off the handle and screaming bloody murder, just remind yourself that there's a very exhausted redhead with a rolling pin who's ready to let fly at the next person who even jokes about "well, we know who to blame if there are bugs".)

When the massive patch notes become available, I'll make sure I get a copy of them linked in. Meanwhile I am going to be pretty much writing until I drop, adding in various useful guides and the like to the site. I will randomly edit this article with links as I get significant changes in place.

• EoF Recipes and You - a guide to the last-known locations of EoF recipes.
• Adornments and You - round one of 'Mum trying to help sort out the adornment system for crafters and customers alike.
• Nov. 14 patch notes - snagged from the SoE forums

Added a note to the bottom of the above adornment document regarding quality and byproducts.

A totally separate and other thing to note is that with the launch of EoF, you no longer have to have a piece of crafting equipment targeted in order to start crafting. You still need to be close to it, but it does not need to be targeted. Why is this important to note? Check out the new Crafting Commission System.

Edit 3, 1:54 p.m., Pacific: Naps are wonderful things when the brain starts overloading. Naps that manage, somehow, to end JUST as the servers come back up are fantabulous! More later. I'm going to go buy my cloak recipes. :D

Edit 6, 3:29 p.m., Pacific: (a re-re-edit of an edit) The common cloak recipes are vendor sold (Qeynos Harbor, East Freeport, Kelethin - have a guard find "tailor" in those zones). The rare cloak recipes will be found in the tailor adornment recipe books (Enigma of the Tailor books), which will be body drops (not chests) off mobs of the proper tier out in the expansion areas.

November 10, 2006 - Busy, Busy!

In between last-minute testing, I am trying to get up more EoF-related information for folks. Check out the following for what is new on the site in the last couple of days:

• Updates to the EoF and the Crafter overview guide
• Carpenter-made Altar screenshots in the furniture gallery!
• The Essential Tinker to answer your basic tinkering questions, in our Guides Section
• Tailored Cloak Screenshots in our Fashion Section
• A new Transmuting Forum complete with a basic FAQ
• A new Tinkering Forum with a list of the items made from beta

November 06, 2006 - More on EoF Tradeskills

So, the NDA has been lifted, and you want to know everything about the expansion and crafting NOW. While I can keep telling you until I am blue in the face that nothing whatsoever is set in stone until it actually launches on November 14, I am not a big fan of that shade of blue. I've updated the Sneak Peek at the Secondary Tradeskills guide to include some details, in hopes that it will answer some of the more pressing questions. Please direct any additional questions to the forums, NOT to tells or PMs. I've repeated myself to folks in beta so many times it isn't funny, and I really want everyone to see the answers, not have to answer the same question 60 times. :)

November 03, 2006 - EoF NDA Lifted

The Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) for the Echoes of Faydwer expansion has been lifted. Folks are now free to talk about their beta experiences. There is still a lot going on with the beta, however, in the next week and a half, so please don't expect a lot of coherence from me right away. There is plenty of testing still to go! Official word on the release of the NDA can be found here.

October 23, 2006 - A Visit With the Fae, Part 2

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We finally had to send a trusty kerra scout out to find the DenMother and her overdue notes from her visit to Faydwer. After getting lost a time or five, (we are not buying that old excuse of being chased by brownies, lass, much less the tales of finding a unicorn!), the scout finally tracked 'Mum to the top of a giant mushroom underneath the tree city of Kelethin, cooing at all the fae flitting by. When we finally managed to get anything remotely resembling coherence out of her, she had the following to say ... (click here for part 2 of Niami's Visit with the Fae, complete with some information about EoF and tradeskills). Editorial note: 'Mum has been so busy helping test all that lovely, shiny new content that it has been hard to find the time to mentally switch gears and put something together for SoE's PR department to approve. For those who had been wondering, yes, there is an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) in effect regarding giving out information on the upcoming Echoes of Faydwer expansion. However several community sites, including EQ2TC, were invited on special press tours, and were given limited permission to publish information and screen shots. Once they have lifted the NDA, which generally happens shortly before launch, I will work on various helpful guides for all of this, but until such time, my attention will be focused on testing, not writing.

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