January 20th, 7:00am
--------------------

*Announcements*

The Plane of Sky is now open!!! As a reminder to our customers, the
alternate planes of reality do not necessarily follow the same physical or
ethereal rules as Norrath proper. Enjoy!

Today is patch day! The EverQuest servers have been patched with the
following changes:

*General Changes / Fixes*

- Some changes have been made to the exit of Nagafen's Lair into the
Lavastorm Mountains. This will hopefully reduce if not solve the bug that
causes people to fall into lava when exiting Nagafen's Lair. Please let
us know how this goes.

- Due to feedback received from the customers concerning the density of
fog during rainstorms, visibility has been increased.

- All drops of steel weapons have been replaced with higher quality
fine-steel weapons of the same type. This change was made to reduce the
amount of new currency coming into the world at the mid-to-upper levels.
The fine-steel weapons are in all cases superior to the steel weapons that
were dropping, they just sell to vendors for less money.

- Casting times have been implemented on several activatable items. This
was done to correct issues that could arise from people chain-casting
these items.

- The safe-point (the point which you return if you fall below the world)
in Kithicor has been moved near the entrance to Rivervale, a safer part of
the zone.

- Corrected a bug that caused AC to be improperly displayed for higher
level
characters. Your AC should now reflect all of your items.

Additional Bug Fixes:

- Corrected a bug in the client that could cause a crash if you were
spammed with emotes by someone on your /ignore list.
- Corrected a bug that allowed ships to move faster when disarmed
- Corrected a bug that caused the Aqualung to lose its charges if dropped
on the ground.
- Fire Giants in Nagafen's Lair should now recover properly when stuck in
lava. Consider yourself warned.
- The Instill Doubt skill has been disabled on the PvP servers.

*Spell Changes*

- Shadow Vortex is now a "drain" spell.
- Siphon Strength will now stack with strength buffs and debuffs
- Panic the Dead cast and recast delays have been reduced. In addition,
the spell is less resistable.
- Angstlich's Appalling Screech had its radius increased slightly.
- All Wizard AoE damage and stun spells have had their radius slightly
increased
- Yonder will now interact better with levitate.
- Form of the Great Wolf had its speed component increased.
- Terrorize Animal had its casting time reduced and is less resistable.
- New magician's spells have been added. Check your spell vendors.
- Reoccurring Amnesia has been made more effective.
- NPCs will now treat the "Cancel Magic" series of spells as hostile.
Previously, NPCs did not mind if players dispelled all of their buffs
before attacking. Now they will.
- The Fear and Charm series of spells now properly notify the caster when
they break. No, seriously, we're certain this time.
- Harmtouch now does more damage beginning at level 41.

*Levitation Changed*

Due to the implementation of casting times on activatable items, the code
that disallowed refreshing of the Levitation spell while it was active is
no longer necessary and has been backed out. The Levitate spell may now
be refreshed while the spell is in use.

*Quests and Items*

- The Armor of Ro should be more obtainable. We will continue to evaluate
and adjust the rarity of other class-specific armor components to make the
pieces obtainable in a reasonable amount of time.

- We have changed the reward of a newbie quest in the Qeynos area from a
level 49 scroll to a level 1 scroll. The issuance of a level 49 scroll
was a typo in the quest data, allowing new characters to amass an
abnormally large amount of currency.

- The stats on the reward for the Rogue Redemption quest have been
increased to make it better than the favorite dropped-weapon for the level
range.

- Ravenscale boots will now drop as frequently as other Ravenscale items.

- The Mask of Deception may now be equipped by the appropriate races.

*Fletching Update*

All arrows created with the new Silver-Tipped Arrowhead (formerly the
Bladed Arrowhead) are now magical in nature, and may be used versus
magical creatures. All existing items in your possession will
automatically morph into the new magical items. Additionally, each
successful attempt to create magical arrows will yield 10 arrows instead
of the previous 5. As such, the vendor buy-back value has been decreased
accordingly.

*Paw*

The difficulty of Paw has been decreased. We found that many of the
gnolls in the new Paw had too many hitpoints, making the dungeon more
difficult than it should have been for the desired level target. Please
let us know how this change affects the viability of the dungeon.

*The Plane of Fear*

The item-drop percentages in the Plane of Fear have been increased. This
change was supposed to have occurred in the last patch, however the data
was not exported. It has been tested and equipment drops are now
occurring at a much higher rate.

*The Plane of Hate*

The item-drop percentages on roaming and fast-spawning NPCs in the Plane
of Hate have been decreased. Previously, these NPCs used the same
drop-percentages as the slow-spawning NPCs, causing overall drop
percentages to be extremely high.

Also, the inhabitants of the Plane of Hate no longer fall for illusions,
and tend to "Hate" everyone.

*Monk Enhancement*

A monk's speed in hand-to-hand combat will now improve with level,
beginning in the high 20s. This will result in higher level monks doing
substantially more damage in a given time-frame.

Though this change does increase the power of the average monk, it should
be stressed that the monk is now even more in need of true tank classes
who have the ability to taunt upset creatures off them. We want to stress
that the "taunt factor" of a monks fist has NOT been increased, though it
may appear so due to your increased damage.

*Paladin/Shadowknight Enhancement*

Paladins and Shadowknights now have a higher hitpoints and higher skill
caps on Bash and Taunt.

The additional hitpoints will be noticeable for Paladins and SKs over
level 25. This was done because the Paladins, SKs, and Rangers had the
same HP base, which upon further consideration is not compatible with our
vision of those classes' roles. This change will basically put Paladin
and SK HPs midway (in terms of Hit Points) between rangers and warriors of
the same race.

The taunt skill was increased because SKs, and in particular, Paladins had
difficulty taunting opponents off of Rangers, Monks, Rogues, and Warriors
due to their lower damage output. Though the Paladin and SK will never
equal the warrior in their ability to taunt, this change in addition to
some of the taunting spells should help them become more effective tanks.

Bash was increased because Paladins typically aren't switching to
two-handed weapons, choosing instead to continue using the bash skill.
Most warriors, being ogres, trolls, or barbarians for the most part, do
not worry about bash and instead opt for slam, which uses the same skill.
Paladins are typically the only characters who use a shield throughout
their lives.

*Rogue Enhancement*

Whenever a rogue is invisible, whether by spell, potion, or skill, they
are now also invisible to undead.

This change was made to add a definite class-advantage to the rogue,
allowing them to do something that no other class could do. It is the
first step in a multi-step process to improve the rogue class.

*Wizard Enhancement*

Level 35 or above wizards will find that their spells (Magic, Cold, or
Fire) much less likely to be resisted. This effect stacks with the Staff
of Temperate Flux and enchanter, shaman, and magician resistance debuffs.

This change was made to increase the effectiveness of wizards at about the
level that all spell-casting classes start seeing their resistance rates
go up. Wizards specialize in direct magical damage. It makes sense that
they should be better at causing that damage than the other classes.

*Bard Enhancement*

Bards will now receive the Meditate skill at 10th level. This skill will
be granted automatically the first time a bard zones after reaching 10th
level, and cannot be trained further. It will have the effect of
decreasing the amount of time that it takes a Bard to memorize their
songs. Previously, it would take 50th level bards upwards of 2 minutes to
memorize a song. Now it is much faster.

*Druid Enhancement*

The skill cap on a Druid's tracking skill has been increased. This change
was implemented based upon general public opinion that the former cap was
far too low for the skill to be even marginally viable.

*Feign Death and Pets*

After a serious discussion regarding the Necromancer's Feign Death tactic,
as well as reviewing public opinion on the matter, we have implemented a
change. As we would like everyone to understand why we feel this change
was necessary, here is a summary of the issue:

Problem:
Feign death allows you to become an invalid target in all circumstances,
providing offensive tactics that are abusive. For this ability to remain
balanced, the pet should follow the same rules as invisibility. Offensive
tactics used by other classes involve the creature getting a saving throw
verses the effect. Since creatures do NOT get a direct save verses feign
death (as you cast it on yourself), and since you can retry the combat
once you have feigned death, there is very little risk to necromancer
himself. As this tactic involves charming an NPC and turning it against
another NPC, which could be part of the same spawn, it allows for
Necromancers to solo MUCH bigger rooms than any other class could. This
situation is well beyond what would preserve game balance for any other
class (soloing the Bloodthirsty Ghoul room and Ghoul Lord room, for
example).

Example:
While there are many examples of how the Necromancer Feign Death tactic is
abusive, one of the most egregious occurs in the Ghoul Lord room of Lower
Guk. The room consists of 2 Bok Ghoul Guards and the Ghoul Lord himself.
Using the current system, a level 50 Necro can easily solo the room at
virtually no risk to himself. The Necro can get into the room quite easily
with Invis To Undead. To clear the room he uses Screaming Terror on one
Bok and Charms the other. When the Ghoul Lord rushes him, he feigns. The
Lord then turns on the charmed Bok and kills it, taking considerable
damage during the fight. The Necromancer waits until the Ghoul Lord
returns to its spawn point. When the necromancer gets back up, he is in
no danger of being attacked due to the way Feign Death works now. He then
charms the 2nd Bok and Feigns again. The fight goes on and the 2nd Bok is
killed. When the Necromancer gets back up he has a VERY wounded Ghoul
Lord AND nearly full mana. The Lord is now an easy kill, and the Necro
collects his special items.

Solution:
Ideally, Feign Death should work like Invisibility, where summoned pets
suicide and the charmed ones break Charm. We do not want, however, to
adversely affect lower level Necromancers to such a large degree. What we
do recognize is the need to prevent higher level Necro's from exploiting
key spawn points. Hence, when you Feign Death, any charmed NPC will
immediately break Charm. However, summoned NPCs (pets) will NOT be
affected. While this still allows the use of the Feign Death tactic with
your summoned pet, it does not imbalance the game and many dungeon spawns
to the degree that charming an NPC does.

*Manastone Changed*

The players have raised many concerns about the power of the Manastone,
which no longer drops. They cite that people without a Manastone are not
as welcome in expeditions to the outer planes and other areas as people
with them. Since dropping additional Manastones via quest or removing
them from the existing populace is not desirable, we've decided to make it
so that the Manastone will no longer function in the alternate planes.
Furthermore, it will not function in any of the zones included with the
Kunark Expansion.

We apologize to those adversely affected by this change. Our general goal
is to avoid making changes to items in peoples' possession, however we
felt this change was, all things considered, warranted and for the benefit
of the game as a whole.

Harmonic.