Topic: SoF

Hi all, this is a copy of a post from a Beta tester on NDA forums. Enjoy

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So, the rumours about new gear are pretty much spot on. That's right - groupers will be having Solteris level HPs with Anguish era weapons. Blame the raiders for not wanting their (ancient) 2.0s to become completely outclassed just yet...

Here are a couple of examples of what lies in store - these are tier 4 group items, from Crystallos (which requires a lot of questing to access):

http://i18.tinypic.com/6yvc09g.jpg


Gold stats are "heroic" - they act as overcap stats and give additional benefits as well, eg 10 HPs for 1 heroic STA, 10 mana for 1 heroic WIS and so on.

Note that there are new mod2s:

Damage shield mitigation: does what you'd expect.
Clairvoyance: returns x mana after every cast. EG get 50 clairvoyance, get 50 mana every time you cast a L76 or higher spell (not exploitable).
Heal amount: Boosts blast heals by a certain amount.
Spell damage: Boosts nukes by a certain amount. Doesn't affect DoTs.

DS mitigation has a cap, the others don't.

There are four tiers of zones in SoF. Tier 1 starts off as light blue mobs at 80, which hit pretty lightly (except for nameds). Dragonscale Hills is a melee solo zone, btw, with mobs tailored for meleers (weak hits, low AC, very resistant to spells).

Gear that drops in tier 1 zones is droppable (except augs) and generally has from 220 to 250 HPs.

Tier 2 zones are places such as Hills of Shade, with mobs that are L80 or higher - even though some of the mobs are root/rottable, they have lovely tricks such as a 5K corruption check nuke that goes off every few ticks. They quad for 2.5K or so, so as a priest I won't be tanking them any time soon! Gear is a mixture of droppable and nodrop, with 250 to 320 or so HPs.

Tier 3 zones are everything else except Crystallos, with nodrop gear that's pushing towards Deathknell in terms of HPs.

Tier 4 is one zone - Crystallos. It's there that the 500HP gear is to be found and the zone itself is locked.

There's new cultural, of course, but it's not for the faint hearted! This screenshot should show why...

http://i13.tinypic.com/6ssojdk.jpg



Sublime symbols are around 320 HPs, FWIW - expect them to cost a fortune.

Here's a random picture of Prathun (spells dev) as a worg - worgs are giant wolves and appear throughout SoF. You also get one free as a mount and I'm pleased to say the new shaman focus is called "Talisman of the Bloodworg".

http://i14.tinypic.com/7wz27md.jpg


Talking of spells, they're largely as you see them on Lucy - no comment from me. Rank 1s are (mostly) vendor bought, with a cost of around 64K for a set - and yes, that means melee tomes are between 10K and 14K a pop. The remaining rank 1s come from quests.

Rank 2s are mostly dropped (and tradeable), with some coming from quests. They're big upgrades over rank 1s, far more so than with TSS and TBS.

Rank 3s are raid only.

Here are the spell vendors, shamelessly copied from a post on the beta boards:

Name: Ellymil Cogswin
Zone: Dragonscale Hills
Location: 900, -535
Spells: Level 76

Name: Kedem Teague
Zone: Loping Plains
Location: -2320 , -520 , 30 (SE of bloodmoon keep zl)
Spells: All 77 spell/tomes

Name: Inizen Nogglezop
Zone: Fortress Mechanotus
Location: 890, -1455 , 404
Spells: lvl 78 spell/tomes

Name: Naene Ebonlocke
Zone: Hills of Shade
Location: -63, 1477, 0
Spells: lvl 79 spell/tomes

Name: Seyan Ebonlocke
Zone: Hills of Shade
Location: 978.72, n577.80

AAs are pretty good overall and (for shamans) they're little short of excellent - 500 HPs from AAs, another 400 HPs/mana from Pact of the Wolf Rk2 (which may have had something to do with a certain wolf-liking shaman Wink ) and an enhanced version of Turgur's on an 8-second timer. All pet classes get a slew of pet related AAs too, including shamans.

There are the usual boosts to avoidance and mitigation, along with raised skill caps for meditate and melee skills alike.

http://i13.tinypic.com/6lt00m8.jpg


Beta item vendors in Dragonscale - note the huge robot. He's got a zoneline in his foot and if you're not careful he'll kick you for 12K damage!

All in all, looks like a good expansion, even if the spells leave a lot to be desired!

Re: SoF

foud this as well :

UI CHANGES:


1) Spell casting slot - we have a 10th spell gem now so any UI's that are custom need to be upgraded/updated
2) Buffs - there is an AA upgrade to add more spell buff slots so any UI's that have custom buff spots need to be upgraded/updated (up to 25 buff slots max)

Re: SoF

Sof AAs for cleric !

AA's

A total of 30 AA paths, 10 brand new and 20 upgrades to existing AA’s. Some of these are offered to other classes so they are NOT all cleric only AA's.

New AA’s (~180 AA’s):

1) General Sturdiness: 5 ranks, each rank costs 6 AA. Each rank adds 100 hp

2) Hastened origin: 3 ranks, each rank costs 3. Each rank reduces the recast timer on Origin by 6 minutes

3) Critical Affliction: 6 ranks as follows: Rank 1=3 AA, rank 2=6 AA, rank 3=9AA, rank 4=3 AA, rank 5=6 AA, rank 6=9AA. Each rank increases the chance for dots to crit

4) Exquisite Radiant Mana: 1 rank, 9 AA. Works on lvl 71-75 spells

5) Hastened Silent Casting: 3 ranks, each rank costs 6 AA. Each rank reduces the timer by 3 minutes for a total of 9 min (from starting 36 down to 27 minute recast)

6) Blessing of Ressurrection: 1 rank, 9 AA. AA single target rez. Has 12 second recast from the moment it starts being cast.

7) Hastened Divine Avatar: 3 ranks, each rank costs 6 AA. Each rank reduces the timer by 3 minutes for a total of 9 min (from starting 36 down to 27 min recast)

Holy Root: 3 ranks, each rank costs 6 AA. Each rank reduces the chance that damage will break the root.

9) Recourse of Life: 6 ranks, each rank costs 5 AA each. Each rank increases the chance that a group heal will be cast when you stun an opponent.

10) Forage: 1 rank, 3 AA. Caps at 50 skill for those who do NOT have it already.



Upgrade AA’s (~538 AA’s):

1) Combat Agility: 5 ranks, rank 1=6 AA, rank 2=7 AA, rank 3=8AA, rank 4=9AA, rank 5=10 AA

2) Combat Stability: 5 ranks, rank 1=6 AA, rank 2=7 AA, rank 3=8AA, rank 4=9AA, rank 5=10 AA

3) Energtic Attunement: 5 ranks, each rank costs 5 AA

4) Mystical Attuning: 3 ranks, each rank costs 5 AA

5) Mastery of the Past: 3 ranks, each rank costs 8 AA

6) Mnemonic Retention (10th spell slot): 1 ran, 6 AA

7) Shield Block: 3 ranks, rank 1=7 AA, rank 2=9 AA, rank 3=12 AA

Spell Casting Subtelty: 3 ranks, rank 1=7 AA, rank 2=9 AA, rank 3=12 AA

9) Healing Gift: 3 ranks, rank 1=7 AA, rank 2=9 AA, rank 3=12 AA

10) Healing Boon: 3 ranks, rank 1=7 AA, rank 2=9 AA, rank 3=12 AA

11) Expansive Mind: 5 ranks, rank 1=7 AA, rank 2=8 AA, rank =9 AA, rank 4=10 AA, rank 5=12 AA

12) Abundant Healing: 5 ranks, rank 1=7 AA, rank 2=8 AA, rank =9 AA, rank 4=10 AA, rank 5=12 AA

13) Celestial Hammer: 3 ranks, rank 1=8 AA, rank 2=9 AA, rank 3=10AA

14) Celestial Regeneration: 3 ranks, rank 1=8 AA, rank 2=9 AA, rank 3=10AA

15) Divine Avatar: 3 ranks, rank 1=9 AA, rank 2=10 AA, rank 3=12 AA

16) Divine Retribution: 1 rank, 9 AA

17) Turn Undead: 1 rank, 12 AA

1 Ward of Purity: 3 ranks, rank 1=7 AA, rank 2=9 AA, rank 3=12 AA

19) Mental Clarity: 5 ranks, each rank costs 5 AA

20) Touch of the Divine: 5 ranks, each rank costs 5 AA

Re: SoF

Bards stuff and new zones !




Content, content, content.

We're going to be gods and demanded for pulling in some of these zones, they're packed very tight, and some of the instances respawn timers mean you're going to need fast pulls. I suspect it'll be near ldon levels of demand all over again.

All looks awesome, there's quests that'll keep people busy and having fun all over the place.

AA's are solid. This expansion isn't the huge leap in power perhaps that people were hoping for, but it could have been alot worse. Nodyin did great work listening to us, working out problems with aa's (why blade-dance was fixed a bit ago).
We do get triple attack, though it's a low amount of skill, so not /that/ noticeable.
Selo's AA that i'll be hotkey'ing to my forward key no doubt is just super sweet. Thats a song I'll never need to mem again.
As from lucy, there's some extras like Fierce Eye, and Quicktime that maybe aren't the burst aa's we're used to firing if we've got certain other buffs on us (that will be likely), but it is more buttons to press!
Usual suspects like more bandoleer/potion/buff slots of course, pick lock skill raised to let us open old content doors, shield block for when we go 'turtle mode', all situation stuff, didn't take anything away from us, nice to have. There's more Cacophony damage, swarm pets getting the increase to damage, bit more of everything rather than too much new stuff.
Egfrith will have the parses up no doubt soon showing exact improvements to our stuff, but basically, it's more of a smoothing thing here and there, not the be-all power upgrade maybe some were hoping for. Probably why you'll see alot of other classes upset that they didn't get the massive upgrades they were hoping for.
Oo, new Mez AA, that's on a long timer, but has a chance to mem-blur. Again, situational, but interesting to have.

Now...
Spells...
Don't blame us, we tried our level best to get something(anything) done, but they're pretty much the copy/paste jobs.
Upgraded mez's, charm, dots (that aren't too bad on the rare, rare occasion you'll be kiting a mob down, alas, no upgrade to Chaos that I'd have liked more), all the usual stuff we need for a lvl raise.
And the mana dot/hot songs. Alas, very, very limited, for a bit of mana, we can extend long lasting dots and hots an extra tick. Yeah, strange and situational if to be used at all.
But, believe every bard here in beta who says we did everything we could.

But, the content, REALLY good and fun. There's going to be a huge amount of stuff to keep us busy and improving our toons.

Zones that stick out
Hills of shade has some very cool quests to work at. Zone is filled with undead that'll keep pallies happy, and looks a decent zone to xp your levels up. Quests are very cool here.

SteamFactory, another high xp appearing zone. Think this'll be popular, seemed alot of areas that are crying out for a rare named spawn. XP very very good, and the gnomes in power armour look cool. Puller not really needed, but just a cool looking zone that's worth a rummage around.

Dragonscale is huge and purty, again, tons of quests to explore. Links using the catapults to;

Mechanatos.
Big bad place of gnomes. This is more the hub zones with alot of instanced/non-instanced zones hanging off it and should see alot of traffic. Quests upto the eyeballs.

Tons more, but these are the ones I spent alot of time in doing group stuff.
Something I think was very cool, was all the group content was done with Betabuffed toons in Katta gear. Basically, the best group gear you can get. So these things should be very well tuned for most people, and obviously raid geared peeps are going to be able to tear things up a bit faster, but these things are all hitting hard, and need a bit of pulling to give even beefy tanks a breathing space.

Walking Guardian
Cool zone you'll have seen in the pics wandering around. The zone is the robot. TIGHT mobs, fast respawns, bards playground

Bloodmoon
Probably another popular spot to level up. High xp, quests, and yet again, HIGHLY packed mobs you WILL be needing a puller for.


I've had a blast on beta this time round, done tons of group missions and enjoyed them all.

No idea about raids, sure others will be able to help there. Peeked into Crystallos once and scared me, went back to questing.

AA's good, content good, spells, wru?

Si tu veux sauver un arbre, mange un castor.

Re: SoF

SoF Maps :
http://www.obsservers.com/eq.htm

Re: SoF

Patch message

11/13/2007


Here's a sneak peek at the update notes for Tuesday.  Please note that this may or may not be modified before the servers officially open back up on Launch Day.


*** Secrets of Faydwer ***

Welcome to EverQuest Secrets of Faydwer, the 14th expansion for EverQuest!

The clockwork armies of the evil gnomish necromancer Meldrath the Malignant gather in the Steamfont Mountains, awaiting his order to invade the kingdom of Ak'Anon. The launch of his great air fortress Mechanotus has torn open the earth, exposing new paths into unexplored regions of the ancient continent of Faydwer.

Rediscover Faydwer as you adventure in the nearby Loping Plains, home to the soul eating wereorcs of Bloodmoon Keep. Strive to end the torment of humans and elves cursed for centuries in the Hills of Shade. All the while, an ancient menace stirs east of the Dragonscale Hills, where the prismatic dragon Kerafyrm the Awakened plans his revenge.

- Level Cap Increase: Players can now achieve level 80. New high level item sets, new Alternate Advancement ability lines, and new spells will come with this increase, including a new AA that grants a new spell slot.

- Heroic Items: One aspect of player power is based on the seven physical and mental attributes of their characters: Agility, Charisma, Dexterity, Intelligence, Stamina, Strength, and Wisdom.  For player characters that have reached the maximums for these attributes, equipping normal items with increased attributes offers no benefit.  Heroic Items feature particular stats that allow players to go beyond those maximums.  For each point in a heroic stat, the player gains one point in the statistic and the maximum on that statistic is increased by one point.  In addition, heroic stats offer benefits beyond the normal statistics.
- Heroic Intelligence: Increases mana pool, mana regen, and the maximum amount of mana regen a character can have.
- Heroic Strength: Increases endurance pool, endurance regen, and the maximum amount of endurance regen a character can have.  Also increases damage done by melee attacks and improves the bonus granted to armor class while using a shield.
- Heroic Stamina: Increases hit point pool, hit point regen, and the maximum amount of hit point regen a character can have.  Also increases endurance pool, endurance regen, and the maximum amount of endurance regen a character can have.
- Heroic Agility: Increases endurance pool, endurance regen, and the maximum amount of  endurance regen a character can have.  Also increases the chance to dodge an attack, grants a bonus to defense skill, and reduces falling damage.
- Heroic Dexterity: Increases endurance pool, endurance regen, and the maximum amount of endurance regen a character can have.  Also increases damage done by ranged attacks, improves chance to successfully assassinate or headshot, and improves the chance to riposte, block, and parry incoming attacks.
- Heroic Charisma: Improves reaction rolls with some NPCs and increases the amount of faction you gain or lose when faction is adjusted.

- New Content: There are 15 new realms for adventurers to explore including Meldrath's maniacal Fortress Mechanotus, the Dragonscale Hills, the Loping Plains, and Kerafyrm's Lair: Crystallos. Travel through Faydwer solo or with groups to complete new quests, tasks, events, and raids and to acquire new items, spells, tradeskill recipes, abilities, and more.


*** Live Highlights ***

- Book of Legends: The Book of Legends, a tome that holds the record of those who have come together to celebrate EverQuest at the SOE Fan Faires, now lives in the library within Plane of Knowledge.

- New Loot All Options: "Loot All" functionality has been added to corpses. This includes a "Loot All" button on the loot window and the ability to shift-right-click loot a corpse.

- AC Mitigation Improvements: We modified the AC Caps and over-cap returns for mitigation for all classes to bring them more in line with their intended ability to mitigate damage. Warriors, Paladins, Shadowknights, Clerics, and Monks received a minor increase in their mitigation ability. Rangers, Bards, Rogues, Shaman, Beastlords, and Berserkers received a moderate increase in their mitigation ability. Druids, Necromancers, Wizards, Enchanters, and Magicians received a considerable increase in their mitigation ability.

- Fog Rendering System Enhancements: An entirely new fog rendering system has been implemented in the EverQuest graphics engine. This new system is used in all zones that currently have fog.

- Multi-core CPU Support: If you have a Multi-core CPU you no longer have to manually set their processor affinity! EverQuest will automatically assign itself to an available core. If you run multiple copies of the client, each new copy running will assign itself to the next available core. Those interested in customizing which core or cores EverQuest clients run on, check the forums.


*** Recently Reported Issues ***

While some of the other issues that were resolved in this update were reported via bug reports, here are a few we'd like to highlight.

Issue: West Display Bug
Summary: When you face west the video geometry disappears except the UI and the Sky. When you face another direction the issue goes away. Normally this is only fixed by doing a reboot of your PC or reloading EQ.
Status:  We have made a change that should reduce the chances of the "west bug" occurring; unfortunately the change requires us to turn off some optimizations. If you want to disable this workaround, please add the following line to your eqclient.ini: DisableWestBugFix=1 (The EQ team would like to thank Community Member Strommmm for his feedback on helping us with this issue.)

Issue: Solteris Instability
Summary: Some people have reported that the Solteris raid zone continuously crashes during raids.
Status: Optimizations have been put in place to improve stability. We will continue to monitor the status of this zone and other instanced zones.


*** Items ***

- Prestidigitase, Staurolite, Harmonagate and Taaffeite have been modified to work in the new jewelcraft system. They will also continue to work in their original fashion if you prefer the jewelry made that way.


*** Spells ***

- Lesser Summon Corpse, Summon Corpse, Conjure Corpse, and Exhumer's Call have had their scribe-levels lowered for shadowknights.
- The Bewilderment line now has an improved resistance modifier.
- Player animations when using various AE spells and combat abilities now display properly.
- The protection granted from Shielding Thunder now stacks with Weapon Shield Discipline.
- The Consecrate Ground line now has a chance to root undead NPCs that enter the aura's area of effect.
- Recast timers on many mage summon item spells such as the Phantom Armor line, Aenda's Trinkets line, and Armaments line were removed.
- Necromancer pet haste now bestows strength and a damage mod.  Upgrades to the line should be improvements under all situations.
- NPC casters will no longer auto-learn Dispel-type player spells. 
- The Decrepit Skin, Ward of Tunare, and Skin of the Reptile lines are now limited by the number of heals / runes bestowed to the buffed player instead of number of hits scored against the buffed player.  The number of "procs" should be relatively the same, but no longer random.  These spells will scale down in effectiveness against lower level NPCs.
- AE spells that use conical or beam areas of effect now have a hit limit of 8 targets.
- The cleric group complete healing spell "Word of Redemption" now mimics Complete Heal in that it heals for 7500 and cannot be focused.
- Single-target fire, ice, and magic instant cast spells from TSS and SoF now share the same recast timer.  The recast delay on Cloudburst has been decreased so it can be chained.  The Cloudburst line is now more damaging but less efficient than the - Flashfires and Cold Snap lines.  Recourses from these instant cast spells now bestow a short-duration buff that applies a damage increase to the next spell with a 3 second cast time or more.  Most other wizard direct damage spells have had their cast times nearly halved and had this time applied to the reuse delay, allowing the use of 2-3 direct damage spells in the time that would previously be required to cast one.


*** Tradeskills ***

- There is a new level 80 cultural armor set for all races and level 75 and 80 cultural symbol sets. New quests can be found for level 75 and level 80 quests.  Additionally there are new cultural raid augments to go with the cultural armor for the Serpent's Spine, the Buried Sea, and Secrets of Faydwer.
- Jewelry Making has evolved to a new method. Now jewelry makers will make base pieces of jewelry and gems that can be put in this jewelry for different effects.  This will allow people to get jewelry customized for their needs.
- Practitioners of spell research will no longer need to use runes, words and pages.  Instead, they can use the systematic spell research system to make all spells previously made with these materials.
- Within one of the newly discovered areas of Faydwer you will be able to find a gnome who wants a measure of revenge.
- A discovery has been made and now Gem Studded Chains are less difficult to make.


*** AA ***

- Harm Touch and Lay on Hands have been reworked. Changes to how these abilities work will enable us to more easily adjust and tune these abilities. The primary change you will notice is that both of these abilities have been changed from innate skills to the AA system. For the first 10 ranks of these new AAs you will automatically gain the next rank as you level up - you won't need to purchase the AAs. Starting at level 51 you can continue to increase the power of your ability by purchasing new ranks of AAs. These roughly correspond to some of the previous AAs that existed for either ability.

All previous functionality for these abilities has been turned off. All AAs based on focusing these abilities have either been refunded and replaced with new AAs or have been modified to work with the new abilities.

- Refunded the Harm Touch AAs as part of the changes to how Harm Touch operates.
- Refunded the AA "Improved Lay on Hands" as part of the changes to how Lay on Hands functions.
- Corrected an issue with the Flurry line of AA's that was causing them to trigger up to 94 percent of the time on a successful triple-attack, instead of up to the intended 30 percent.


*** Zones ***

- Fixed an issue with Halls of Honor where NPCs were dropping the incorrect item for the Hot Zone quests.


*** UI ***

- Corrected a few typos and errors with a few of the UI windows.
- Added "Claims" option to the EQ menu button which toggles the Claim Window.
- Made a few minor adjustments to the claims window.
- Added a slider/ctrl to loot slots with stacks. Shift-/Ctrl- semantics work with this functionality.

- Changed -

EQUI.xml
EQUI_LayoutCopyWnd.xml
EQUI_ClaimWnd.xml
EQUI_OptionsWindow.xml
EQUI_MailWindow.xml
EQUI_LootWnd.xml
EQUI_LeadershipWnd.xml
EQUI_GuildManagementWnd.xml
EQUI_TributeBenefitWnd.xml
EQUI_Animations.xml
EQUI_VideoModesWnd.xml


*** Miscellaneous ***

- Zoning to Toxxulia no longer puts player in Antonica chat channel.




- The EverQuest Team

Re: SoF

Nice ! thank you for the reading during this big patch !


Some infos from The Druid Grove too smile

_______________________________

Mettini :martien

Re: SoF

Kill some gnomes for me

http://sigs.promisedlandt.de/truestory.png

Re: SoF

come and kill them yourself smile

Re: SoF

Mogi couldnt even solo a gnome sad