Today's patch message. Adagia.

September 19th, 7:00am
------------------------

*Level 1 Character Purge*

The Level 1 character purge announced several weeks ago will take
place on Wednesday, September 27, 2000, at 7:00am PST (GMT-7). Any
level 1 characters that haven't been played within the previous 30
days will be deleted. If you wish to keep any level 1 characters
that you may have, please log in and play them between now and 9/27.

***Patch Day***

As a testament to our on-going goal to constantly provide more
content for EverQuest players, today's patch primarily consists of
*many* content-additions to the game.

*New Epic Quests*

We are pleased to announce that we have implemented new "Fiery
Avenger" style quests for every class in the game (including
paladins). The ultimate reward for each quest boasts a custom model
with unique particle effects. We think that you will be pleased.

Good luck to everyone on your quest.

*Class Issues*

Rangers:

Last week we completed in-depth testing of melee and defensive skills
for all melee-centric classes. In the course of these tests we
determined that the ranger class was not performing to its intended
level, and have made the following changes:

- The "Jolt" spell has had its casting time reduced.
- The Skillcap on Dodge and Parry has been increased.

Monks:

High-level monks can now carry increased weight without penalty. The
additional allowance is granted at levels 55 and 60.

Cleric:

Celestial Elixir was failing due to multi-tick cure components that
are incompatible with that configuration. We have therefore removed
the cure components and increased the healing provided by this spell.

After a great deal of consideration, we have concluded that the Mark
of Karn spell is imbalanced and requires correction. This spell's
current function makes melee classes without dual-wield far less
desirable members of the group. As such, the spell has had its
duration decreased, its recast-time increased, and its "heal per hit"
value decreased.

*Fungal Regrowth*

"Fungal Regrowth" is now a self-only spell. It was being used as an
offensive spell by virtue of its "snare" effect upon the target.
Furthermore, we ruled out making it "group only" as with other spells
that have this issue, due to a class-balance concern. The spell was
reducing the group's desire for classes capable of casting
regenerative magic.

*Attack Speed Buffs*

In this patch we corrected a bug that would cause any "Haste" item
combined with any "Haste" spell to automatically yield maximum haste,
regardless of the level of "Haste" granted by each individual
component. This fix increases the usefulness of better "Haste"
equipment and spells. The downside to this is that those who usually
have both items and spells active will see a reduced attack-speed
unless outfitted with the best equipment and spells.

*High-Level Dungeon Balancing*

Veehshan's Peak and Sebilis have received loot adjustments in order
to address disparities in risk and reward. For the most part, the
quality of the "common" loot in Veeshan's Peak is at least as good as
the "rares" from Sebilis.

*Low-Delay Weapons and Damage Bonus Changes*

In accordance with our announcement several weeks ago, two low-delay
weapons can now only be equipped in the off-hand. Included in this
change are the Mosscovered Twig and the Barbed Scale Whip. The delay
on these weapons and the associated damage bonus to weapons in the
primary hand made these weapons much too powerful for their
availability and the risk associated with their acquisition.

In addition, two-handed weapons have had their damage-bonus
modified. The damage-bonus for low-delay two-handed weapons (27 or
below) created a problem similar to the weapons above and has been
reduced. The damage-bonus has not changed for normal-delay (28-39)
two-handed weapons. The damage bonus for high-delay two-handed
weapons (40+) has been increased.

*Server Selection Screen*

It has come to our attention that new players often think that the
high-population servers are better, based upon the logic that if
everyone else is there, it must be a good server. However, in
Massively-Multiplayer games, less populated servers are often
considered superior for gameplay. Therefore we have marked servers
that would benefit from new characters as preferred servers, listing
them in "green" in the server selection window. The preferred
servers have populations such that an influx of new people would
benefit the server rather than cause overpopulation.

*Custom Emotes and AFK*

Animations with custom emotes have been implemented. Current canned
emotes such as /point allow a target other than the current target to
be specified. That will continue to work. So if you type "/point
Baobob", the usual text will come up. However, you can add custom
text to the emote, but you must specify the target as "say" as the
target. For instance:

/point say points at a gnoll, indicating that he is ready to kill it.

...your character will execute the /point animation, and the text
output will be: "CharacterName points at a gnoll, indicating that he
is ready to kill it."

Finally, you can now set a custom message for when you are /AFK.
Type "/AFK <message>" (without the brackets) to set your custom AFK
message. For instance, if you type "/afk Grabbing a snack", you will
reply with "Grabbing a snack" when someone sends you a /tell.

*Skill Gain*

The skill-gain rate of many skills is now further modified by
character stats. This will allow those with natural affinities
towards certain skills to improve at a greater rate.

*Trade Skills Enhanced*

Many of the trade skills in game have received massive enhancements,
including dozens of new craftable items, new fishing and foraging
items, and other things to be discovered once in game.

In addition, trade-skill specialization has been implemented.
Players will be able to exceed 200 points of skill in ONE of the
generally available tradeskills. This includes:

- Baking
- Blacksmithing
- Brewing
- Jewelcraft
- Tailoring
- Fletching
- Pottery

Once above 200 points in one of these skills, no other skill will be
able to exceed 200. Specialization restrictions do not include class
or race-specific trade skills such as Alchemy, Make Poison, and
Tinkering. Players with race or class-specific trade skills will be
able to exceed 200 points of skill in that skill, PLUS any generally
available trade skill.

The enhancement of trade skills is an on-going project. Further
enhancements will be made in the coming weeks.

- The EverQuest Team