Folks make have noted that our list of known bugs and issues was a bit bloated and unwieldy. So, today, the bug list was given round one of a new diet plan. {grins} It's going to take me a bit today to verify changes and get the list trimmed down accordingly, but progress is being made. For now, know that SOE's aware of our bug list, and is tackling some fixes for us.

From the patch notes:

• - Added radishes to level 10 alchemy harvesting objects.
• - Added wormwood to level 40 culinary harvesting objects.
• - Foresting in Thundering Steppes now requires 90 skill, not 96.
• - Cedar is now classified as "cedar." This should fix any recipes that call for this type of wood.
• - The bone longbow recipe now looks for a bone stave instead of maple. A typo was fixed in the recipe.
• - The tin plate recipe now requires one coal instead of five.
• - The generic canvas pattern recipe now requires Tapa Paper.
• - The ruckas cloth recipe should now ask for canvas yarn (only the thread portion needs to be the rare ruckas). The same issue existed with cloth swatch and linen cloth. Changed level 20, 30, and 40 "cloth" so that it requests two yarns made from the common ingredient rather than the rare.
• - Rare potion recipes should now accept pristine tempered glass. (Note from 'Mum - this means Tier 1 rare potions, which were broken, should be working now.)
• - The boiled leather bandolier recipe should now accept boiled cord as a component.
• - The quality of steel plate now impacts the end-quality of the armor it is used to make.
• - Recipes for soapweed resin, soapweed oil, and soapweed wash have been added for scholars.
• - The quality of cinnamon used will now impact the end-quality of recipes that use it.
• - The cuirboilli shoulder pads recipe now looks for a boiled cord and generic canvas pattern.
• - The cuirboilli leather skullcap recipe now looks for a boiled cord and generic canvas pattern.
• - Three rare Outfitter recipes (cured leather bandolier, cured leather satchel, cured leather sheath) have been removed from the Advanced Craftsman Volume 12 book and now appear in the appropriate Outfitter volume.
• - The strengthened gloves recipe now looks for a Generic Rough Linen Pattern.
• - The recipes for bone buckler and bone round shield now call for tanned leather cord.
• - The recipe for feysteel chain boots now uses the broadcloth pattern.
• - The recipes for deer sandwich, turtle soup, sunfish casserole, deer pie, deer casserole, roasted cabbage, herb crusted frog legs, basil soup broth, sunfish sandwich, and deer pasta will now accept medium grade basil as an ingredient.
• - Recipes for throwing star pouches have been created for all levels and qualities. The recipes can be found in books that had existing bandolier weapons in them.
• - Recipes for cudgels and clubs above level 30 have been created and added to the appropriate tomes.
• - A recipe in Carpenter Essentials 49 has been renamed to clarify that it produces a Small Fulginate Militia Sconce instead of a Small Fulginate Militia Lamp.
• - All recipes for throwing weapons should produce the same quantities at each quality level (5, 10, 15, 20)

January 14, 2005 - All Access Pass Expanded to Include SWG

I found the following in my mailbox this morning:

Good news! LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment have worked together to bring Star Wars Galaxies to the already steallar line up of software available to Station Access subscribers. Now, players who own the software have access to every SOE-developed MMO title for the low price of $21.99 a month. Station Access now includes Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest, EverQuest II, PlanetSide, EverQuest Online Adventures for the PS2, EverQuest for Macintosh, Infantry, Cosmic Rift and Tanarus.

In addition to being able to play all of SOE's MMOs on a single account for one price, Station Access subscribers receive other benefits, including 4 additional character slots in EQII and the free access to EQII Adventure Packs (for those how have subcribed more than 60 prior to release).

January 11, 2005 - Minor Update

Tradeskill writs now have a cash payout to help cover the cost of the materials that you've invested into them. Additionally, we have confirmation that the tier 5 fulginate plates and rings have the same event bug as the tier 4 and tier 3 stuff, so be careful out there, smiths!

January 10, 2005 - Warning to the Smiths!

I really don't know how many people read the front page of this site, as opposed to hopping directly to the forums, but I'll put up a warning here anyway. Please, please, PLEASE be sure you're checking the Known Issues/Bugs sticky thread in the General Tradeskill Questions forum regularly. VERY frequently. I truly hate hearing how many smiths are keeling over dead because they're not checking that thread for known issues. Several times a week, until things settle down, I'm personally testing many of these bugs, on top of user submissions, to see what's been fixed, what's newly broken, and so forth. Right now making iron rings, carbonite rings, feyiron rings (possibly tier 5 as well, though no word), carbonite plates, feyiron plates (again, no clue on tier 5) can get you KILLED. Apparently, when they fixed the events issues with iron plates, they sorta kinda broke a few other things. Yes, I know one of the weekend patch messages said it was fixed. It's not. I tested them this morning to be sure. The wrong events are happening during the crafting process and there's no way to counter the critical events (white hot materials, extensive hardened metal, oil quench, extensive soft metal). Since uncountered white hot materials failures take over 70% of your max health in one fell swoop, getting more than one crit event on a single item can kill you. Please be careful, gang, until this is fixed. The bug list is still large, and I know it's sometimes a pain to wade through it all, but reading it, even if you skip reading everything else, can save you a lot of lost materials, and xp debt.

January 07, 2005 - Further Information on Tradeskill Changes This Week

This was posted this evening by Moorgard on the SOE forums:

As many players are aware, this week's update made some significant changes to the way the crafting process works. We wanted to address some of the concerns raised as well as give a more thorough explanation as to why we felt these changes were necessary.

Generally speaking, some aspects of crafting were not working as we had originally hoped. For instance, crafting had become a matter of hitting buttons in quick succession to provide the desired result, which meant that little thought or skill was involved in making a valuable product. If you look back at what we said about tradeskills before launch, you'll see that we have always wanted crafting to reward skilled players just as much as adventuring does. Without changing the way reaction arts work, being an artisan wouldn't be about skill but rather who could hit buttons the fastest. Successful crafting should require attention and skill, just like fighting monsters does.

Additionally, pristine crafted items have been entering the economy at an extremely high rate. This has created the perception that pristine items are the norm and that anything less has no value, which was not how we envisioned it to be. Pristine items were meant be more rare and valuable than they are now, while other grades of items were intended to be desirable to players. To allow pristine items to continue to enter the world at an accellerated rate would limit our ability to introduce new kinds of unique crafted items in the future.

Another concern raised has been that crafted items are not as desirable as many dropped items. While pristine versions of tier 3 crafted goods provide more levels of growth than tier 5 drops, we agree that in many cases highly beneficial dropped items are too common. We have already begun work on addressing this situation.

Our goal is to ensure the long-term health of the game and its economy. While we regret introducing changes that fundamentally alter how a certain profession is played, we'd regret it more down the road if we didn't make these changes now.

Below are some of the specific changes included in this week's update and why we felt these changes needed to be made.

Change: The benefits and costs for many reaction arts have been modified.
Reason: Some crafting professions had the ability to add large amounts of progress and durability each round while others could not. Reaction arts now have a much more even distribution of benefits vs. costs across all professions.

Change: The power cost of some reaction arts has increased.
Reason: Some arts had too much of an advantage over others because they provided a very large benefit at a very low cost. After looking at the factors involved, we have decided to reduce the cost of many reaction arts. In an update early next week, we will change it so that no reaction art will cost more than 14% of your total power (down from a maximum of 21%).

Change: Abilities from the same line now are on the same reuse timer.
Reason: This was added to encourage a more meaningful choice on the part of players. For example, I can use Seasoning, Spice Up, Pinch of Salt, or Dash of Pepper during one tradeskill round, but I can't use all of them together. The player should investigate which option is most beneficial in a given situation.

Change: Like benefits from reaction arts don't stack anymore.
Reason: Players were able to stack huge amounts of progress or durability gain at the same time. We have changed it so that if two abilities both give progress, the first effect used will be the one that you benefit from. For example, if I use Seasoning (+16 progress) immediately before Constant Heat (+24 progress), I would gain only the +16 progress from the Seasoning ability. The detrimental effects from both of those abilities still apply, however, so I would be affected by both the durability loss from the Constant Heat and the lowered success chance from the Seasoning. This change, as well as others, encourages attentive play.

You can no longer gain more than 28 progress in addition to the normal success/failure/critical success/critical failure for a single round, and you can no longer gain more than 15 durability in addition to the normal success/failure/critical success/critical failure for a single round.

Finally, many of you have pointed out many bugs and inconsistencies in some aspects of crafting. We want you to know that we do pay attention to these issues, even if we don't respond in every thread or fix them as quickly as we'd like. Our design team definitely intends to tackle these issues and make crafting just as viable and fun as we know our players want it to be.

Crafting is an important aspect of the game to us, just as it is to the artisans who play. We're serious when we say we intend to make crafting an integral part of gameplay, both now and as we introduce new content and expansions. While this round of changes may have come as a shock to some players, we hope you understand that the reason we introduced them was not to penalize existing artisans but rather to keep the profession healthy and meaningful over the long term.

January 07, 2005 - Odds and Ends of Issues

From sifting through the SOE forums, it looks like some of the significantly large increases in power use on various tradeskill reactions may be unintentional. Beghn says they're looking into it. The issue with the missing tradeskill writs was also acknowledged by Blackguard, who mentioned that the fix should be going in with the next hotfix. We've no word yet on any of the outstanding issues mentioned in the Known Issues/Bugs thread, but I'll see if I can get a response from a whimper regarding them sometime next week. (I want more time for you folks to submit in updates via the link provided in that thread, first, so we've got a majority of the tradeskill bugs collected in one spot before I try to corner someone about them.)

January 06, 2005 - Patch Information

Today's patch is beyond huge. I've given the patch notes their own separate patch notes page instead of burying them in the front page news, and boldfaced the items of most interest to tradeskillers. As we test things and verify changes, I'll update the bug list in the forums accordingly.

January 06, 2005 - Incoming!

The long-awaited big patch is finally incoming ... this was taken from SOE's EQII forums (which will also be down part of Thursday):

Good news! The "big update," consisting of numerous bug fixes and content adjustments, will be going live to the English language servers on Thursday, January 6. For a preview of what's included in this update, see the Test server update notes posted on 12/16/04

December 31, 2004 - Holding Pattern

A lot of things are on hold until the holidays are over, so there's not a lot newsworthy going on. If you're curious about all the things that are expected in the next large patch (and it looks to be quite large), please be sure to check out our Test Server Information forum. Please also keep an eye on the Known Issue/Bugs thread, as that list is large and growing larger all the time. Some of them, such as fir being taken from the bank in place of ash in wholesaler tasks, can be quite painfully expensive if you're caught with that bug. (GMs have been inconsistent on replacing such things, so it's REALLY a good idea to be aware of the bugs before you play, so as not to lose precious rares.)

December 30, 2004 - Main site weirdness

When RackNine moved us the new server had an updated version of PHP to fix a major security flaw. Along with this update was a change to the way the foreach command works. Everyplace I have that command in my code I have to change it. This may take a while. In the meantime, the main site will act weirdly until I make the changes needed.

This is not directly the fault of Racknine, so don;t blame them The upgrade was needed.

There also seems to be some DNS latency so some people may still be getting old data. The DNS should propigate soon, but is not always as fast as wished.

December 23, 2004 - Big Patch Delayed Until January

From the SOE forums:

We realize many of you who play on the live servers have been anticipating a number of fixes, updates, and enhancements that are currently present on our Test server. As you know, our goal was to release this update to the live servers before the holidays.

However, at this time we feel it is in the best interests of the game to postpone this major update until the beginning of January. This will provide us extra time to evaluate the data on Test and address any issues that arise before it goes out to the live servers. Our focus right now needs to be on the game's overall stability, and we don't want to risk having any issues arise during the holidays. As you might imagine, many on our team will be spending this time with their families.

We apologize to those of you anxious for some of the fixes included in this update. This was a decision we definitely didn't make lightly. At the start of the new year, our priority will be getting this update out as soon as possible.

Thanks again for your patience, and happy holidays to you all.

===========================
Moorgard
EverQuest II Community Guy

December 21, 2004 - About the Big Mega Patch

At this time, there is no ETA on the large patch that has been discussed quite a bit. Understandably, it's going through some extra testing at the moment over on the Test server. There's been enough discussion of Test server changes and such that we now have a forum set aside for discussion of the Test server, so if you're curious about what's happening over there that may impact tradeskillers, that's a good place to check.

December 19, 2004 - XP Bonus in Effect

From this morning's patch message:

As Mr. Smedley announced in his message below, we have implemented increased experience gain as a small token of our appreciation for this weekend’s outage. We were able to implement this earlier than anticipated. The experience gain is in effect starting today, Sunday December 19th, and continuing for 48 hours until our normal morning update on Tuesday December 21st. The modifier is adding an additional 50% for both adventuring and tradeskilling. Once again, thank you for your patience, and incredible support.

- The EverQuest II Team

To Our Players 12/18/2004 8:30 pm

Hello Everyone,

We sincerely apologize for the downtime this weekend. We had some hardware issues that caused us to have to tread very carefully in bringing the game back up. We wanted to triple check everything to make sure there wouldn’t be any major problems, and it’s taken a while to both fix the problem (we had to fly out engineers from one of our hardware vendors) and to bring each of the servers back online because of the careful validation process we need to go through. We have to do this very carefully and we hope you can understand our desire to do this right. We're trying to balance that with getting the game back up as quickly as possible. So far most servers are back up and the rest should be up in the next 4-6 hours, hopefully less. I realize that ETA's that come and go can frustrate people, so we do our best to give you the most realistic estimates possible.

Out of respect for our players, we’re doing the following:

1) Every player will receive 3 free days.

2) Early this week (Monday or Tuesday) we will have a 24 hour period where we will have accelerated XP gain. Details are still being worked out and we’ll communicate this to you as we firm up the plans.

We are committed to providing you with excellent service. Our team has been here for over 40 hours straight, and I can tell you our dedication to doing right by our players is the thing that’s foremost on everyone’s mind here at SOE.

Thank You,

John Smedley

President, Sony Online Entertainment

December 17, 2004 - Server Downtime

As most of you know by now, some nasty problems crept in with this morning's patch. Despite the efforts of many folks at SOE, apparently there was enough corruption of character files from it that a rollback to the time of this morning's patch was required ... and it's taking a lot of time to get things happy once again. While there's still no ETA at last check, Gallenite just posted the following on the SOE forums:

While we continue to work on the issues that have kept the EverQuest II servers unavailable today, we wanted to let you know that in addition to the experience and tradeskill debt wipes that were announced earlier, we will also be offering free time to help make up for the time you're unable to play. Exact details regarding time extensions will be available once we get past our current problems.

This is a 24/7 effort on behalf of everyone involved. We will not rest until all of EverQuest II is back up and running. We again apologize for the inconvenience this has caused, and thank you all very much for your understanding.

December 16, 2004 - Another Update on the Big Patch

Moorgard had this to say about the planned large patch (which includes several tradeskill fixes):

Just to keep you all informed, we will likely wait until early next week to update the live servers with our major update. We want to give our Test community some extra time to help us iron out a few issues so that the game is stable for all our customers.

I'd like to send a big thanks to all our testers working so hard to help us improve the game. It is much appreciated!

Meanwhile, thanks to all the folks donating information and time, work on our database progresses. While there's still lots to do, you'll find that all the nonrare artisan recipes (i.e., through level 9) are in, many of the rare artisan recipes, level 10 recipes for all three professions, with more recipes being added every day (working on 11-19 outfitter now). We've found that the easiest way to enter them, sadly, is to sit there in-game staring at the recipe book while entering them directly into the database, due to the variety of details that are needed. It makes for some interesting zombie sessions for Mum and and our database volunteers as we step through book by book, trying to make sure the recipes are all in place while you folks work on getting us the item stats that go with them! Once I've gotten through the alt army's scribed books, I'll go back to working off user submissions for recipes, especially for tier 3 and above.

December 15, 2004 - Patch Delayed

This week's planned large patch has been delayed until Friday or early next week to ensure that it's tested a bit more.

December 10, 2004 - Vendors Buying Again

We're not sure why the database is being bratty and listing the second December 9 update after the first one, instead of in chronological order, so until Ngreth can take a look at it tomorrow, just mentally flip the two updates below this one in sequence. {grins} Meanwhile, the vendors are back to buying things again, and while we found a couple folks who thought they could ignore forum rules with impunity even after my front page warning about it (and found out the hard way we had almost zero tolerance yesterday), we weathered the flood of angry tradeskillers yesterday rather well. Hopefully things will settle down enough again that we can spend a bit less time monitoring the forums, and get back to the work of adding recipes and such to the database.

{Edit by Ngreth - It looks like for whatever reason the post that was made LATER in the day was saved with a timestamp earlier in the day... so... it got confused. I gave it an arbitrarily later timestamp, so it should work now :) }

December 09, 2004 - More on Upcoming Artisan Changes

Just a quick note from a new post by Moorgard on the SOE forums tonight about upcoming changes for Artisan tomorrow, and next week.

We realize many artisans were unhappy with today's change which made NPC merchants no longer buy crafted items. We took this step because the imbalances in the selling prices of these items were so extreme. This was not done because of a few people abusing an otherwise balanced system, but rather because the entire system needed to be reevaluated.

Our designers have been working to come up with a solution, and I'm pleased to announce that a significant change will be put in place with the December 10 update: NPC merchants will once again buy crafted items. The price offered by NPC merchants will be based on the actual cost of making the item.

We didn't intend for artisans to see selling to NPCs as a means of earning a profit. Selling products to an NPC should allow you to recoup most of your costs, but the artisan's goal should be to earn money by selling goods to other players. Tradeskill society tasks provide an additional means for crafters to subsidize their work and gain experience and faction through their efforts.

In the near future, our design team plans to introduce new types of fuel that will be required to produce items in each ten-level range. These fuel types will grow more costly at higher levels, and thus higher-level items will both cost more to produce and have greater value to NPC merchants. Again, though, the intent is for the artisan's profit to come from either making interim components for other crafters or producing finished goods to be purchased by other players.

We are also aware of a number of bugs that have troubled artisans since the game's launch. While we have released many fixes through our regular updates, some issues have remained. I'm pleased to report that our major update scheduled for the middle of next week will include many of these fixes. Among them:

• Poisons and potions will have descriptions of their effects.
• use of craftsman and provisioner reaction arts will properly advance the artistry skill.
• The effects of reaction arts have been balanced.
• The benefits of different kinds of food and drink will be clearly visible.
• Advanced craftsman books will grant their recipes correctly.
• Level 30-50 tradeskill society tasks will be available.

Artisans are meant to play a key role in the world of EverQuest II. We realize bugs and sudden changes can be upsetting, but our team works very hard to make sure all players enjoy their time in Norrath. Thanks for your continued feedback, as well as for your patience in our efforts to build a stronger, more stable game.

December 09, 2004 - Vendors Call a Halt to Buyback of Crafted Items

Ok, folks, I know people are going to be hot under the collar about this one, but remember something as you post on our forums. WE ARE NOT SOE. Our forums have rules of conduct that you WILL follow if you are to post on them. Period. Do not do personal attacks. Do not dev-bash. Do not even suggest real-life physical harm to anyone because you're upset with this game change. Don't go there. We don't want to have to break out the ban stick because you're upset. You are not the only one upset. Deal with it. If you can't deal with it, and post in a civil manner, take a time out from posting on our boards. K?

That having been said, here's the justification for today's change:

We announced in the notes for the December 9 update that NPC merchants no longer pay cash for player-crafted items. As this may be a surprising change to some players, we wanted to explain the reasons behind this decision and make clear that you will be able to sell to merchants again after we make some adjustments to the system.

Our goal for artisans has always been for them to be a vital part of everyday life in Norrath. They are the ones who turn common components into the necessities that all players rely on, including food and drink, weapons and armor, spells and scrolls, furnishings and containers, and much more.

Unfortunately what we've found to be happening is that many artisans have been selling their products to NPC merchants rather than to other players. This is due in part to unintentionally inflated prices being offered by merchants for certain items, which was effectively making it impractical for crafters to sell their wares to players. Because they could make more money selling items to NPC merchants, crafters had little incentive to earn a smaller profit by producing items that other players would want to buy.

By limiting merchants from purchasing crafted items, we hope to encourage artisans to produce goods that other players will want to purchase. This should help stabilize the selling price of items that had been out of reach of many consumers. The primary market for crafters should be selling their goods to other players. Once we complete a thorough pass of costs and values for crafted items, merchants will once again purchase them, though not at the inflated rates they have been paying up to this point.

We realize that some crafting professions may feel at a disadvantage compared to other artisans when it comes to selling their goods on the open market. For instance, everyone can understand the benefits of buying weapons and armor, while the value of food and drink is not as visibly apparent. Provisioners will be pleased to know that an update tentatively scheduled for the middle of next week will allow players to clearly see the benefits of the different qualities of food and drink.

Some artisans may be concerned that they will no longer be able to afford to advance their skills through item production, or that they won't have a means to earn cash unless other players are online to buy from them. Keep in mind that crafters can receive tasks from their social structures, and that completing these requests will result in earning experience, monetary rewards, and faction gain.

While we understand this change will affect how some artisans have been playing the game, we feel it to be in the best interests of the long-term health of the economy. It should encourage increased player interaction and help develop a market that was in danger of stagnation.

We're working to get appropriate pricing in place for NPC merchants to purchase your crafted goods. We understand that having some ability to sell to merchants is important for crafting progression and provides an option for selling your goods if you can't find a market with other players. While selling to NPCs should never be your best choice, it should provide some benefit and be an option as you're leveling up at your trade. While we don't have a specific date when you can expect to see the new pricing put in, rest assured it's a top priority for our tradeskill team members.

(As a side-note, we know the mention of faction gain for the tradeskill quests is incorrect, and not yet implemented.) Full discussion on this announcement on the SOE forums can be found here. If you feel you can vent without personal attacks, death threats to the devs and things like that on our bandwidth, we have a Primal Scream forum thread open for it. Just behave yourselves, please. We really don't want the forums to degenerate because folks are upset at SOE, k?

~Mum

December 03, 2004 - Patch Items

There are a couple things from today's patch that I wanted to highlight.

• Tradeskill recipe books no longer drop on the Isle of Refuge.
• The minimum skill required to harvest objects in Antonica and Commonlands has been lowered
• A new crop is in bloom! Blue succulents are now harvestable in Nektulos Forest and Thundering Steppes.

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