 The (Not So) Little Things Crafters have often stared at patch notes, scratching their noggins while saying "Yes, it is a huge patch, but what's in it for me?" Few, if any, will be saying that this time around, as they dive through the ginormous Test Update notes for GU36. (Go ahead, go read them if you wish, I'll still be here when you're done!) Just remember, this is currently still on the Test server, and, as of yet, there is no published ETA on when it will go live. Let the large fan sites cover things like the AA changes that are being tested by our dedicated Test server residents. I'm sure you'll hear alllll about them, from numerous points of view, before this update is finished with testing and goes live. Instead, follow Mum on a preview of some of the many, many "little things" that are of interest to tradeskillers, and see why Domino (and the other devs who have had a hand in various of these changes) is collecting avid fans by the boatload. (Stay tuned to this article over the coming weeks for links to various new humorous articles highlighting some of these changes, once Mum's muse recovers from writing this not-so-little article). Other changes or additions to this article after the initial publishing date are in bold blue text below. First, the highlights, Mum-style, of course!
Even in condensed form, that is a lot of territory to cover, so grab yourself some caffeine, have a drool cloth handy if you're prone to slobbering and have a stretch before continuing. {rolls up her sleeves and flexes her hands a couple times} Ready? Here we go! "But I Don't Wanna Be A {insertclassnamehere}!I suspect I am not the only one who has heard folks complain that they either chose the wrong tradeskill profession by accident, or suddenly decided they really hated their current tradeskill choice and wanted to be able to reset it. It was/is a common enough issue that it has made it into more than one tradeskill FAQ. Sure, you could always start up a fresh alt to try out a different tradeskill, but what if you were out of tradeskill slots? Or if you wanted that specific character to have a different tradeskill profession, period, end of discussion?If you reeaaaally want to change it that badly, fret no more. NPCs in Neriak, Kelethin, Haven, Ironforge Exchange (Qeynos) and Coalition of Tradesfolke (Freeport) are ready and willing to help you out. This will be a reset down to artisan level 9, including a loss of all recipes, event counters and so forth, so be very sure that you want to start with a clean slate before you take the plunge. Other nitty-gritty: Your level 2-9 artisan recipes and scribed books should not be impacted, nor should any heritage quest recipes or Nest of the Great Egg recipes that you had scribed. It took some work, but the coders have ensured that this reset will NOT reset your harvesting or secondary tradeskill (tinkering or transmuting) even if your adventuring level is low enough that the new max caps would have dropped. (i.e., Grubby, a level 4 shadow knight and a level 21 tailor, decides he wants to be an armorsmith instead. Grubby also has all his harvesting skills around 105, and is a skill 95 tinker. If he reset his tradeskill profession, he would become a level 9 artisan. Under the old system. this would have forced his harvesting and tinkering skill caps down to 45. This was bad, and the devs scrambled to get some recoding done to prevent this from happening. It is on Test now. Weightless Coin?While this one is aimed mostly at adventurers, crafters, too, can run into the problem when they've just snagged their earnings from several broker containers, and are running multi-step writs that hand out change at the end of each step, and so forth. Coin weight is being removed and coin will auto-change up as needed. (100 copper will automatically change into 1 silver, etc.) This is a good thing for our less-beefy crafting types, including a certain tiny robe-wearing halfling! ;)What Does ____ Look Like?Offline fashion galleries will still have many uses, especially for side-by-side comparisons of furniture pieces, dress clothes, etc., but there are many, many times when you "just" want to see what one single item will look like without either having to buy it to try it, or toggling out to do a web search.Introducing the new dressing room feature, which will pop up a quick preview of certain items such as armor, weapons, dress clothes, and furniture. There are still some quirks to work out on some of the taller furniture pieces at this writing, but we're still in the testing stages as I write this, so there's time for a bit more polish to be added. Mouse over any item that has this feature, while holding down the CTRL key and you will see your pointer turn into a magnifying glass. CTRL-leftclick, and you get a popup window displaying the graphic of the item. If the item is a furniture item, you see just the furniture item, with a black background. If the item is a piece of clothing, armor or weapons, you see your paperdoll and what the item would look like equipped, again, with a black background. No more guesswork, no more accidentally attuning something when you "just" wanted to see the look, etc. I Bought a Crafting Station and It Only Makes Shaped Items?!?!City merchants have sold 4 levels of crafting stations to various guilded folks over the last couple years, but there has always been confusion and complaints when someone spent much status and coin only to find they'd bought the wrong one.The medium two quality levels of crafting stations, worked and shaped, will no longer be sold by city merchants. (Those who own one will still have theirs, this only impacts what is sold from this point forward.) The simple version, good only for making crude items, will still be available for those who want it for decoration, etc., and will get some handy new examine info so that buyers know it is good only for crude items. For those who wish to do home-crafting that are in a level 25 guild or higher, the pristine-capable elaborate tradeskill equipment will also still be sold. More Status Homes!Residents of Neriak and Kelethin that are in level 30 and above guilds will now be able to buy higher-end homes for a mix of status and coin. I will get the Home Sweet Hovel guide updated with further details ... eventually! In the meantime, this will be of interest to home-shoppers as well as furniture-makers, since larger homes mean more need for status furniture.Sinking Sands has a Rising (Root) Population!The difficulty with obtaining tier 6 roots in the quantities needed by a variety of classes has been a recurring whimper. This update will see a slight increase in root nodes in comparison to dens and shrubs located in the Sinking Sands. Additionally, there will be a few more of all three node types available in some areas of this zone. Mmmmm, rootseses!Great Swords of Fire!So, you want something new and different in the way of furniture, do you? Perhaps for one of those new status homes mentioned above? How about a sconce of a stone hand holding a sword, with purple flames dancing across the sword? Too big? Maybe a single candlestick (with candle) is more your style? How about a mirror? Some poppies? A wine rack that actually has wine bottles in it?Ok! It is as simple as that, at least on our end! It wasn't so easy from the dev and art side of things, but they made it happen, nonetheless. Several new furniture items are available to be crafted by carpenters. There's no need to buy new books or the like, as they will automagically appear in the proper recipe books, starting in the late teens with two bone items, and continuing up into the tier 7 books with the knight's sconce and a new tapestry. In late-breaking news, the bone throne needed to be changed so it would not use the same art as a Freeport status-purchased item. The newly-made replacement throne needs a bit more tweaking and testing to make it a bit more solid. It will be released and automagically added to the proper craftsman recipe book in time for GU37 (not 36). All other furniture pieces are on-schedule for GU36 release. Chocolate & Cheesecake?!It was a black day for chocolate and cheesecake lovers alike when all items related to them left the lands a year ago. Mourn them no longer as new recipes appear in the land for these items!Starting in the 20s and continuing into tier 7, provisioners will recieve one recipe for dipping the fruit of the tier in chocolate, one recipe for making a fruit cheesecake, and one recipe for fruity fudge. Those who have already scribed the appropriate recipe books will find that these recipes have been added automagically, so there will be no scrambling for new books, etc. These recipes will require one single fruit of the tier (fayberry, peach, etc.) as well as some vendor-sold bits and pieces. As with other foodstuffs that have a tiny resource requirement, they are statless foods of short duration (40 minutes). This makes them very good for role-players, cheese-loving ratonga, chocolate addicts and the like, without unbalancing the current stat food progression. Mmmmmmm. Chocolate. {dreamy smile) "Would not take effect!?!" Bah, I say!One of the changes in the past that was not well-received was the attempt to use a lower-level version of a reaction art in the round following the use of a higher version of that same art. There were many times when we wanted to use a lower tier art, in order to impact progress vs durability, or for reasons of power use, etc.Fret no longer. Our pleas have been heard, and this feature has been removed with this Game Update. Which Lights Light Up?It has always been a memory test and/or hit and miss when shopping, to figure out which of the crafted lights actually works as a light source vs those that just look pretty. New examine info has been added to lights (chandeliers, sconces, lanterns, etc.) so you can more readily tell which ones will light up your home. Expect the light section of the furniture gallery to be updated once this is ready to go live.Freedom of Action, Now with Extra Freedom!The level 62 alchemist-crafted Freedom of Action potions will no longer snare the user, and will also cure both root and fear. This should make them a tad more useful and desirable on raids and such!Colored Loam FTW!Compulsive harvesters, alchemists, provisioners and tinkers alike will enjoy this change. No longer will you stare at containers full of loam, mousing over every slot trying to find the loam needed for a specific tier. Harvested loams will keep the current graphic, but will be colored/tinted based on the tier of the loam. I'll update the Node Knows with the loam color information sometime before this update goes live.Imbue Examines FixedI am a little fuzzy on this one, but apparently there were issues with freshly-made imbued items not always displaying the correct information on an examine. If this was a pet peeve of yours, be peeved no more! {grin}Ammo Changes for BalanceAll thrown ammo and arrow items, be they summoned, bought, quested or crafted, will be receiving some tweaks, so don't let this one catch you by surprise. Damage, range and to-hit bonuses will be impacted, and players will be more prone to requesting one type over another, based on the desired effect. For "just" pulling, one might want a low-damage but increased-range ammo item, for example. Those depending on doing real damage via ranged attacks, on the other hand, may wish to sacrifice some range in order to increase their damage and/or hit bonus. I'll work up some examples later for folks.Open, Sez Me!"'All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.'" The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams No, the Qeynos crafting instances aren't populated by invisible ghosts. You won't hear any Star Trek door opening sounds, or that "Hummmmmmmyummmmmmmah!" of a self-satisfied door on the Heart of Gold. But the doors will open. By themselves. No more diving for a door in the crafting instance that someone opened just to have it slam in your face. No more wasting precious seconds on a timed work order trying to open two doors between the nearest work order table and the stoves ... while running at high speed and clicking like a madwoman. Just approach the door. It will be happy to automagically open for you. You can almost hear it humming happily to itself as it does so ... can't you? Pwing! You Got a Rare! Just Kidding!You're there, compulsively harvesting every node in sight, and suddenly that happy sound happens. You know the one that I mean. The one that says you've found some rare item! Only, much of the time, it isn't really, truly a rare, but yet another imbue ingredient. Don't get me wrong, those ingredients definitely have a use and a function, but they're not, well. Rare. Let's face it, you get all excited at having been notified that you're the next winner of the rare lottery, only to found that you've won the consolation prize. Somewhere out there in the depths of time and unreality, you know Bristlebane is snickering over the look on your face.No more, we say, no more! From GU36 forward, if you hear the announcement sound that means you harvested a rare, you really, truly did harvest a rare, and not another imbue item. Imbued gunk will be treated as a normal harvestable. Huzzah! Come On Baby, Light My FireWere you one of the many who was disappointed when the Rujarkian Firepit and Rujarkian Signal Fire were, well, not full of fire? Not even a single tiny spark? Did you do creative contortions with raised platforms and ebon sconces to make your firepit at least seem like it had flames ... or was that just me? Well, watch out for your curtains, rugs and other flammables, because they're on fire! The firepit gives off flames and a small amount of smoke. The signal fire is bright embers and enough smoke for you to send smoke signals seen two zones away, just like something called a "signal" fire should! In the words of the Human Torch, "Flame on!"Phew! That is a lot to digest in one sitting, and that was even with leaving out a few minor bits and pieces, as well as the adventuring-specific stuff. Hopefully, however, it will have you a bit more prepared for the various "little things" that are currently being poked and prodded by our dedicated Test Server population. For those looking for a "fluff light" version of some of the details behind the above changes (crafted ammo, food and furniture name and level info, loam colors by tier), check out the The (Nitty Gritty) Little Things. As time goes on I will be adding few more humorous crafting-related Mum's-eye-view mini-stories based on these changes (watch the links below), and they will also be added to the Storybook portion of the Tradeskill Guides section of the site. The (Not So) Little Things Series at Ten Ton Hammer
Created: 2007-06-18 12:28:42 Last Modified By: Niami Denmother Last Modified on: 2007-06-27 03:46:32 Printer Friendly version © 2003-21 Niami Denmother. The fine print. This is a research and information site. All of the information on this site has been gathered and submitted by the players and Niami Denmother. While we try our best to keep the information here as accurate and up to date as possible, rely upon it at your own risk. By submitting information and graphics to this site, you are granting us permission to use the materials in any way that we deem appropriate. EverQuest is a registered trademark of Darkpaw Games LLC. Except as is disclosed on the "about" page, this site has no official connection with EverQuest or Darkpaw Games LLC. All information, articles and graphics on this site are the copyright of EQ Traders Corner, its owners and/or Darkpaw Games LLC and may not be copied or reprinted without the express written approval of the copyright holder. This site is not meant to represent official EverQuest (Darkpaw Games) policy, and we are not responsible for errors and/or omissions that occur due to changes in EverQuest trade skills or information that we recieved from the community that is in error. Hosted By: 
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