I hope everyone has been having fun with the Brew Day celebrations, which will end on the 22nd. There are a lot of other events looming on the horizon, including another Moonlight Enchantments, another City Festival, and more! What more, you ask, in this season of bountiful live events? How about a celebration for that grand Trickster, god of Mischief, creator of halflings, Bristlebane?

Yep, that is right. Bristlebane Day is right around the corner, and, for the first time, there will be Bristlebane Day craftables! Of course Mum is making sure you are properly pampered and has a Bristlebane Day crafting writeup for you!

In a lovely update to the Shadows of the Betrayed signature quest, once you have completed the quest you may buy an extra copy of your class reward from the Shady Swashbuckler on the Nektulos Forest docks. This will allow you to have one for decorating your home, and one for using for evac or appearance! Thanks, Domino!

Overwhelmed by the overflowing abundance of crafter & decorator love? Perplexed by the plethora of planned parties and other events? It is getting a tad hard to keep track of what starts and ends when, much less which SF crafting dailies you can or cannot do on any given day, or when you can catch the next Portal Repairs mission for the signature quest. In an attempt to beat it all into submission, I am poking and prodding the forum Calendar feature into submission. The app is a bit limited, but it might just do the trick ... I hope! Down at the very bottom of the main forum page, you will find a Today's Events section that will give you an abbreviated listing of SF daily crafting missions, Mara daily crafting mission and any world events. Should you want further information, or a longer-term view, the Calendar link at the top of our forums leads to, unsurprisingly, the calendar view of the events. Each event comes with a clickable link that will lead you to another link with any additional details that are available for the event.

There are, of course downsides, such as the event-click leading to another link that needs to be clicked before you get to the event writeup, and a repeat event function that works so poorly that I will have to manually add the repeating events, one by one by one to the proper days, but it offers us an option that is integrated with the site, and allows you, with a quick glance at the forums, to see what is going on of crafter interest. Poke at it, try it out, see what you think. Once I see what the general response is, and we have made sure the information I already have up is accurate, I can see about filling in the events for April as well.

March 11, 2010 - Brew Day Festivities!

Brew Day is not just for drunken dwarves and followers of Brell! Make sure to check out the Brew Day preview for details on this annual event, which runs from March 11 through March 22. There is a wonderful pack that has a visible appearance amongst the several crafted items, and you will want to read up to make sure that you do not miss the quest to obtain the improved ale goggles (so you can see the nodes needed for the crafting components), as well as the quest to obtain the pack recipe.

March 11, 2010 - Brewday Bar Delay

Apparently there was a large bar brawl in the Brewday bars, or so says the system announcement. The bartenders are expected to have cleanup done, and the bars open, around 11 am Pacific, at last check. (All the rest of the Brewday stuff is available, but since all the crafting requires access to the bar before you can harvest, much less craft, um, you might want to go grab glowies, harvest more resources, etc. for a bit.)

March 09, 2010 - Pictures!

A few comments have been added to the SF signature quest, Shadows of the Betrayed, making it clearer that, yes, you have to be on the Emergency Portal repairs for one part, yes, you are under a timer for another part, and yes, when it says VERY CAREFULLY make the combine, there is a reason to be careful ... unless you like mender fees and crafting xp debt! :P In addition, we now have a page with pictures of all the class-specific rewards, including what they will look like when equipped. Among other things, the hotfix this morning included a change to turn them from dual-wield weapons into one-handed weapons, which should make it a little less awkward for quick swaps between weapons.

March 04, 2010 - Shadows of the Betrayed

Mysteran put together a detailed accounting of his adventures with the new crafter signature quest that was mentioned yesterday. The brief blurb that I threw up yesterday has been replaced with a step-by-step journey that includes over 40 screenshots(!!) Check out Shadows of the Betrayedfor more information. (Yep, he really is wielding an alchemy flask with particle effects as a weapon - how cool is that?!)

In other news, the date and location for the 2010 Fan Faire has been announced. I hope we will see some of you in Las Vegas on August 5-8!

March 03, 2010 - SF Crafter Surprise!

The wonderfully sneaky Domino had another surprise in store for us, it seems, that has just started popping up today. It seems that two weeks after you complete the final Quel'Ule crafting quest in the series, you can expect a surprise in your mailbox. Hmmmmm....

March 02, 2010 - Hotfix

Among the things in the hotfix today, the following two tradeskill items were mentioned:

• Tinkered environmental shields are now also useable by scouts.
• It is now possible to harvest in the area of the Sundered Frontier known as Kejaan’s Rill; however, be cautious, as not all the inhabitants of that area are pleased by this change.

March 01, 2010 - City Festival - Neriak!

The March 2010 City Festival has begun! It is located just outside of Neriak, so if you are a low-level good player, please watch carefully for level 25 guards at the bridge. Screenshots will wait on sleep and such, but the new offerings are mainly a blue marble theme.

EDIT: Images are now available on the new Neriak City Festival page.

February 25, 2010 - Hotfix

Amidst the other things that happened in the hotfix today:

• Sata, the Quel'ule faction merchant, now also sells scholar type fuel (candles, coal, and incense). (That will help with the Quel'ule portion of the SF crafting quests!)
• Incorrect recipe costs on a number of crafted Mark of Manaar equipment items have been corrected. (The two recipe books for these equipment items now drop in the daily crafting missions)

February 24, 2010 - GIMME!

... Thus says Mum when she sees a new must-have backpack. Read, and see, all about it in this Brewday crafting preview!

February 23, 2010 - Hotfix

Along with the digital download SF launch today, the hotfix today fixed the 10+1 harvesting event for quicksilver to properly return kaborite instead of ulteran diamonds. (For those who are confused, the rare harvesting event where you get 10 common plus the rare was returning diamonds for both the gem 10+1 and the soft metal 10+1, and it is now fixededed!)

February 22, 2010 - Quick Quest Update

Quest guide for Distillation Inspiration has been dropped onto the quests page (level 80+ alchemist quest, with pre-requisite). In addition, there is a link near the top of the Quests page with the SF crafting questline for those trying to work through that quest series.

February 19, 2010 - Moonlight Enchantments Again

Get ready Norrath! The phase of the moon is just right and the mushroom rings will be active again for a short time. The event will turn on at 12:01am PST on February 20th and run until 11:59pm PST on February 21st. See the Moonlight Enchantments article for more details!

February 16, 2010 - Of Cats and Rats

Sparked by an adventuring quest, and some kerra faction items, Kaisha brings us Of Cats and Rats

February 16, 2010 - Launch Day!

Kiara put a post on the SOE forums on what to expect on launch day, and I am repeating it here in case the SOE forums are inaccessible due to load:

On February 16th, EQII's sixth expansion, Sentinel's Fate will launch the retail headstart! We're all very excited, and hope that you share our enthusiasm. We want to give a brief overview of what to expect on the 16th.

We'll be bringing the servers down at midnight on February 15th to begin patching to the live servers. Fan Faire attendees will be flagged at this time. (Looks like they already are!!!)

Starting at 6am PST and running until 8am PST, Zatozia will be running a Ustream event.

Kiara will be on the Official Forums and in Zam's IRC chat to provide updates until the servers come up.

We plan to have the servers back up and ready to go by 9am PST.

In addition, Mum wants to mention the following things for those who will experience the expansion in a few hours:

• Level 80 adventurers - If you aren't getting any regular xp, and you are expansion-enabled, did you remember to set your AA slider back to 0?
• 400 tinkers and 400 transmuters(adorners). Remember that you must hit level 81 in either adventuring or crafting before your 400/400 skill has the cap raised to 400/405 and you can skill up once again. (This goes for harvesting and such, too.)
• Take a few moments to look over your new AA trees - they have changed a bit. If there is a complete AA reset, you may need reallocate your AAs, rebuff, resummon your mount and all that jazz and it is likely that you will need to reapply your harvesting tool buffs, as they tend to lose track of themselves during such resets.
• A ton of stuff has been added to the SF Information Clearinghouse since it was put up, but not everything could be covered. Make sure to check there, yes, but if something is confusing, incorrect or downright missing, drop something in our forums, please. Hopefully someone will have an answer to your questions, and we can get the appropriate guide(s) edited as time allows.

Update: You can mostly ignore the tradeskill patch notes in here, as they just dropped in some of the notes from recent beta patches that don't always make a lot of sense by themselves, but you might want to wade through all the other notes in the GU55 Patch Notes to see all the changes to Butcherblock, Timorous Deep, etc., etc. If nothing else, it gives you something to gnaw on while waiting for the servers to come back up.

February 12, 2010 - Bonus XP Weekend!

Greetings Norrathians! There will be a bonus applied to all experience this weekend, starting at 3:00 p.m. PST on Friday, February 12th and ending at 11:59 p.m. PST on Monday, February 15th. Happy and safe adventuring!

And yes, by "all", they really do mean adventuring, tradeskilling and AA xp!

February 09, 2010 - Lore and More?

Kiara is once again sending me odd email. Maybe some of you lore-hounds can figure it out? (Also, a reminder that the SF Information Clearinghouse is being updated frequently, and there is also still time to enter to win one of several SF expansion keys!)

February 08, 2010 - Win an SF Expansion Key!

Mum, like most crafters, is a die-hard packrat, and one of the new tinkered items in the SF expansion is aiding and abetting those packrat habits. The tinkered personal harvest depot (made with rares, naturally), will be a lore house item that can hold ginormous stacks of 100 different harvestable items. (So, a lot like the guild hall harvest depot, except that it holds less different stacks.)

Join us in this discussion thread on our forums for more details on how you can win a free key to activate the Sentinel's Fate expansion for your account by guessing the total number of resources Mum had in her personal harvest depot.

February 05, 2010 - Expansion Information & Press Tour!

Mreean-lass: Ye once said that if I e'er got in a bind, ye'd be glad tae help oot. If ye are still willing an' able, I could really use a hand right aboot now, afore I lose what is little left o' me mind. Mree's amber cat-eyes widened as she read the note from Niami. Mum was infamous for helping others out, and then being far too independent-minded to ask for help for her own self unless she was utterly overwhelmed. If she was asking for help, it must be pretty dire, indeed. Without a second thought, the calico-colored kerra ranger grabbed extra arrows and weapons, packed some extra provisions, and headed for the nearest Ulteran spire. If Mum needed help in the newly-discovered Sundered Frontier, she was going to get it! READ MORE

This begins the start of a veritable flood of information for crafters regarding the upcoming Sentinel's Fate expansion. I will be adding a lot of infomation today, and over the next two weeks, but wanted to get the above press tour out the door right away. Keep an eye on the Sentinel's Fate Information Clearinghouse to follow along in my debris trail today. (I am currently melting down our server with a large number of images, so bear with me for any delay in getting up more details.) (Edit: Fixed the info clearinghouse link)

February 04, 2010 - Love is in the Air ...

The Erollisi Day celebrations have returned to Norrath, complete with not only quests, but more lovely items to craft and buy. The festivities will run until February 16th, so take a bath, break out your best romantic clothes and check it all out! (That lovely red mirror from the Gorowyn City Festival matches wonderfully with the Passionate Attired from the E-Day vendor, but remember that the Gorowyn Festival will only be around until the 7th, so grab one soon if you want one!)

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