A big-ass patch

[Kenrick]

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=stat&message.id=45

Lots of good stuff in there, but here's my sentimental favorite (even though I'm not a caster):

- Optimized the lightning bolt effect.

Lightning bolt!

[Alkiera]

My personal favorite...

- More bug fixes than you can shake a moss snake at!

Tho there are a lot of fixes I've been looking forward to in here.

- Inventory: The overflow slot now features a context menu that allows you to examine the item, move it to your inventory, or destroy it.
- Inventory: Added information on the value of various kinds of food and drink in the examine window and tooltip.
- Main UI: Fixed a bug causing only the first embedded item link to get the link color.
- Main UI: Custom chat channels now use their assigned channel colors.
- Main UI: Maps now have a heading indicator instead of a dot.
- Main UI: Clicking on a map icon now creates a temporary waypoint and a wisp to that location. For real this time.
- Main UI: Items can now be dropped anywhere in the trade window. If you drop an item somewhere that doesn't make sense, it will be placed into the leftmost available spot.
- Tradeskill UI: When repeating a recipe, the components window will now remember which particular items you previously selected.
- Spell and combat art creation has been changed to allow for different qualities of scrolls to be created. Apprentice IV spells and arts will now result when a pristine spell or art is successfully made.
- The iron bar recipe has been changed to use the correct knowledge types and techniques.

Really, a pretty good patch overall....  And that's not all of it by far.

Alkiera

[Kenrick]

Too bad these two new level 25-30 dungeons are currently broken. :(

[shiznitz]

How? I haven't played (thank god) since the patch went live.

[Kenrick]

Broken, ie. you cannot access them.

[UD_Delt]

Most tradeskillers also got nerfed pretty hard. Not sure yet if it's a bug or intended but now some of the trade skill buffs take extreme amounts of power. As an alchemist using a ? mark buff 4 times now consumes my entire power bar.

I used to make pristine combines 9/10 times. I can now only get about 1/10 to the pristine level if I bother to counter events and maybe 2-3/10 if I don't bother countering.

Of course for Armorcrafters or weaponsmiths not countering events = death so in effect they can only rarely make pristine weapons or armor.

[Toast]

Kenrick-
I thought you weren't playing? I felt so guilty about possibly influencing your decision to buy EQ2.

[Kenrick]

Kenrick-
I thought you weren't playing? I felt so guilty about possibly influencing your decision to buy EQ2.

Eh, I met some cool people ingame just before my free trial was up so I kept playing.  It's enough to keep me interested for a while.  And the tradeskills aren't that bad, just extremely time consuming.

The game's a blatant treadmill in every aspect, with horrible solo hunting support, but it kills some time.

Kenrick MacLaren - 28.7 Berzerker, Najena

[Alkiera]

My highest character is a lvl 20 Sage, so I have had some experience with alchemy.  Yes, Experiment's power cost did go up, but the other two initial reactions you get went from having medium and low power costs to none whatsoever.  And their effects add up to the same as Experiment.

Basically, due to several changes, crafters all have to re-learn the optimal way to do things.  So like all patches, there's alot of early doom-n-gloom, and it may well by more difficult in the end, but not as bad as it first seems.

Alkiera

[UD_Delt]

Alkiera:

Not quite correct.

First the Theory buff at level 1 which used to be +14 to progress at low power cost is now -6 durability +14 progress no power cost.  Compare that to the alchemist tier 3 buff which is now -9 durability and +14 progress at no power cost. They nerfed both buffs by adding the - durability and completely killed the tier 3 buff by making it worse than the tier 1 buff. The other two scroll buffs both have the same effect which is +10 durablilty -20 progress.

Also, the other buffs (beakers) you mention lower the chance of success and after checking normal rates of failures to failures using those buffs at a conservative estimate I would say they add at least 1 critical failure extra every 5 ticks. Not worth the +20 durablitly over 4 ticks for the loss of 45 durablilty on the failure. Net gain of using those buffs is a negative.

Add to that the now near useless of the question mark buffs as anything but an event counter and alchemy took a huge nerf.

After the alchemy nerf I now have two options.

1. Use the +dur -prog buffs and have a normal tick of +30. Doing this I can get to pristine nearly every time but it takes about 3 times as long per combine.

2. Use the -dur +prog buffs and the combines take as long as they used to but only about 2/10 are at the pristine level.


And yes... at this point I have tried every combination of buffs possible.


Edit: multiple spelling mistakes.

[Alkiera]

Yesterday they lowered the cost of alot of the crafting spells/skills.  My evil newbie had a much nicer time of it today, making his own tempers and washes for crafter tier1 stuff.

Alkiera

[Wasted]

Alkiera:

Not quite correct.

First the Theory buff at level 1 which used to be +14 to progress at low power cost is now -6 durability +14 progress no power cost.  Compare that to the alchemist tier 3 buff which is now -9 durability and +14 progress at no power cost. They nerfed both buffs by adding the - durability and completely killed the tier 3 buff by making it worse than the tier 1 buff. The other two scroll buffs both have the same effect which is +10 durablilty -20 progress.

Also, the other buffs (beakers) you mention lower the chance of success and after checking normal rates of failures to failures using those buffs at a conservative estimate I would say they add at least 1 critical failure extra every 5 ticks. Not worth the +20 durablitly over 4 ticks for the loss of 45 durablilty on the failure. Net gain of using those buffs is a negative.

Add to that the now near useless of the question mark buffs as anything but an event counter and alchemy took a huge nerf.

After the alchemy nerf I now have two options.

1. Use the +dur -prog buffs and have a normal tick of +30. Doing this I can get to pristine nearly every time but it takes about 3 times as long per combine.

2. Use the -dur +prog buffs and the combines take as long as they used to but only about 2/10 are at the pristine level.


And yes... at this point I have tried every combination of buffs possible.


Edit: multiple spelling mistakes.

Where do you get those numbers from?

Anyways I am an alchemist and still have no trouble getting pristine in roughly the same time it took me before or managing my power since the patch.

[shiznitz]

The timesink of crafting is pretty heavy. It took me about 60 minutes to turn 16 raw wheat > 16 malts > 16 whiskies. The malt recipe was yellow for the most part. Then I dinged and the whisky recipe was yellow.

The game really needs to permit a crafter to make one shot stacks of trivial recipes. I shouldn't have to grind 20 jumjums one at a time to make jumjum wine.