EQ2: On live servers now, Double Exp Weekend and Tinkerfest!

Double exp is on servers, so it's time to get my alts leveling hehe

Also tinkerfest is up so i guess I'm gonna check whats new on it.

Get Cracking!

Everquest 2 GU 61 now on Test Server

Next big game update on Everquest 2, is now on test server ready for everyone to join.

It's an extensive game update, so I'll just post it the major changes.

For a complete list you can just go here.

Game Update 61: “The War of Zek”

PLANE OF WAR

The time is near for the great Fortress of Drunder to reveal its true purpose to all. The very bedrock of the Eastern Wastes shudders and rocks as a massive planar portal rips itself open within the fortress walls. The sounds of war echo through its halls as the God of War himself prepares his innumerable armies to march across the frozen face of Velious and seize control of the lands of Norrath for all eternity.

The Plane of War is a normal and challenge mode raid.

Elements of War is a normal and challenge mode heroic experience.

Dynamic Dungeons

Two new dynamically scaling dungeons have opened up in the Sinking Sands.  These heroic dungeons automatically scale to your party from 60 to 90.  Their entrances can be found on the door to the Silent City and from a new portal next to the door.  These dungeons scale their difficulty and rewards to your group.

THE PALACE OF SABARON
Sabaron’s Palace is the home of a mad Djinn who believes that by using his power and the power of a newly discovered artifact, the Tear of Anashti, he can raise an army of Sul’Dal to march on the Plane of Air and take it over for Djinn to rule.  His palace is full of undead evils he has resurrected as well as his most trusted attendants.

SILENT CITY: THE DELVING DEAD
The dead within the halls of the Silent City are restless after lifetimes of slumber, as if roused by an unseen hand.  Ancient overseers crack whips as the undead hordes delve deep into hallowed soil.  They labor tirelessly, endlessly searching for an ancient artifact of great power.

Player Statistics Updates

• Many stats now provide additional benefits to other stats!  See below for details:
• Having parry skill over the level cap now gives a bonus to uncontested parry and uncontested riposte.
• Having defense skill over the level cap now gives a bonus to uncontested dodge.
• Having haste over the cap now gives a bonus to flurry.
• Having weapon skill over the cap now increases your minimum damage amount making it closer to the maximum amount.
• Having weapon skill over the cap now gives a bonus to riposte damage.
• Having spell and combat art skills over cap now increases the minimum damage of those spells and combat arts making it closer to the maximum amount.
• DPS is now a rating that translates into the actual increase to your melee damage with no cap. Mouse over the DPS stat in your persona window to see the actual percent increase to your damage.
• Having spell casting speed over the cap now gives you a slight bonus to double cast spells.
• Having a focus over the cap will allow you cast spells while moving.  It will be very slow movement, but will increase as your focus skill increases.
• Multi Attack is now a rating rather than a straight percent chance for additional attacks.  Mouse over the Multi Attack stat in your persona window to see how many extra attacks you get, and your chance for an additional attack on top of those.

Alternate Advancement Revamp

• Subclass Alternate Advancement trees have been reformatted. The connections have been removed and the tree is now formatted in rows. The first row contains four abilities and requires no points spent to access. The second row contains five abilities and requires five points spent in the Subclass Tree to access. The third row has six abilities and requires ten points spent in the Subclass tree to access. The fourth row has six abilities and requires 15 points spent in the Subclass tree to access. The fifth row is the endlines – now known as Expertise abilities. These abilities unlock every 20 points spent in the Subclass tree above them. At 20 points spent, you can select one Expertise ability. At 40, 60 and 80 points spent, additional Expertise abilities can be purchased.
• The Subclass Alternate Advancement tab now unlocks at level 30.
• The Shadows Alternate Advancement tab now unlocks at level 50.
• The Sentinel’s Fate Alternate Advancements now unlock at level 80.
• The Heroic Alternate Advancement tab now unlocks at level 80.

TRADESKILLS

• Harvesting abilities can now only be modified by direct means, so only harvesting tools or racial abilities should affect them.  Casting speed will no longer modify them. Harvesting and tradeskill skills will no longer be modified when mentoring.
• There is now a Rare Harvest Chance stat for tradeskillers. This is the chance to get a bonus rare harvest in addition to the normal harvest rewards from a harvest node.
• Tradeskilled Battleground Jewelry and Armor bags can now be traded and sold on the broker.
• Carpenters can now make some stone textured room dividers, and a wider variety of floor tiles to match their room dividers. [Fan Faire Request]

Tradeskill Alternate Advancement Abilities

• Crafting classes now have their own alternate advancement tab to spend AA on.  This AA is earned through the normal course of gameplay when crafters do crafting quests.

Details:
There are three rows of abilities.
Each ability can have up to 5 points spent on it.
A maximum of 25 points can be spent in this tab.
Each row needs a minimum of 10 points in it to buy into the next level.
Level 1

Ample Harvest: Each rank bought increases your chance to harvest a second time by 3%.
Swift Creation: Each rank bought increases your progress gained each round by 2%.
High Quality Materials: Each rank bought increases your durability gained each round by 2%

Level 2

Rapid Manufacturing: Each rank bought increases your progress by 2.
Resilient Materials: Each rank bought increases your durability by 2.
Effective Method: Each rank bought increase your success chance by 2%.
Advantageous Practice: Each rank bought increases your critical success chance by 2%.

Level 3

Trim Reaver: Each rank bought increases your chance of harvesting a rare by 0.2%.
Conservation of Mass: Each rank bought increases your chance of not using materials when crafting an item.

ITEMS

• All group/raid dungeon items 20 to 90 have been reitemized except for Velious and SF raid/group dungeons.
• All overland zones have been reitemized.
• Brand new loot has been added to many named creatures in outdoor zones!
• Players who wish to procure the Scaleborn arena champion should seek out Ellywig Sprocketbaker in the Bonemire.
• The Lodizal shell shield house item now hangs properly on the wall.

AMENITIES

• The guildhall Adventure Writ Agent amenity now offers Odus and Velious writs in addition to its prior Kunark writs.
• Added tinkering and adorning recipes to the Guild Hall Tradeskill Recipe Salesman.
• Fixed a bug where you could get an invalid amenity listed in your guild hall amenity list.

Everquest 2 GU 60 - Drunder piece of armor

I know some folks are curious, so here is a screen of piece of armor from the new raids zones, released on the latest GU 60:

Hold of Rime: The Fortress Spire

I'll be posting the strategies on different dungeons either group or raid from Everquest 2.

Today we have Hold of Rime: The Fortress Spire.

This zone is of middle difficulty. There is at least one hard boss fight but the rest is quite doable. Mind the epics while heading for this named!

Agna Icespear - It's basically a tank  and spank fight, although the name will port on timer. Just wait till he stops porting and get back on him. Mind the frontals and keep always near him.

Dockmaster Jit'coel - Tank and spank, whenever someone is in a ice cube, destroy the cube.

Abelbrown the Bookie and Quanth Coldblade - Have MT tank Quanth when he gets up (80% from Abelbrown health) and make them go steady at the same time to 0. Anyone can tank Abelbrown. Just be sure they are spread away from each other or they will heal themselves. Oh someone be ready to put up 1 plat to start this fight! :p

Bouont Crushingfist - Named and 3 adds, mezz the adds, tank the named. Kill one add at a time while name is imune to damage. If you can take all 3, even better, just burn the adds. After adds, tank named, the named will port to a platform, need to do 3 clickies at the same time to make him come down. Rest just dps. It's the hardest fight here.

Grand Restorer Lingwal - In this arena, there are several platforms all around. Just have your group standing there, while tank tanks the named near middle. Randomly the name will port to middle, tank runs to group on platform to avoid some AoE. Easy fight.

Et voila, this was a fast run down over the fights on Fortress Spire. Grats on loot! ;)

Everquest 2 GU 60: Children of War

Is now live on EQ2 servers the latest update for the game. It's the first big update after DoV release. This update brings a lot of content for most players, which include new dungeons and new raids and also battlegrounds content. Update includes:

• Three new heroic dungeons:
• Confront Warmaster Grolla Skullwielder in the Spire of Rage
• Challenge Warmaster Korok Hai in the Strategist’s Stronghold
• Battle Warmaster Deynka Packlasher in the Tower of Tactics

• One new x2 raid - Citadel of V’uul
• Defeat Queen Vorticia V’uul in the Citadel of V’uul

• Three new x4 raids [all available in Normal and Challenge modes]:
• Encounter Sullon Zek in Sullon’s Spire
• Test your strength against Tallon Zek in Tallon’s Stronghold
• Prove yourself against Vallon Zek in Vallon’s Tower 

• Earn the new Velious Discord faction to purchase new PvP equipment and adornments
• Enjoy PvP and Battlegrounds rule modifications for better balance and fun
• Fame system improvements
• New PvP armor and adornments

Additional content:

• Visit Whipmaster Snargeant in the Fortress of Drunder to assist with new daily missions within Drunder
• Speak to Provocateur Bas Darkfrost at Thurgadin Docks to earn Primal Velium Shards through a new solo quest
• Two new heritage quests
• Additional signature quest line
• New tradeskill quests and recipes
• New adornments interface
• Ratonga players will find Qeynos has become more accepting of their presence
• And coming soon: help build the wizard and druid transportation network in Velious

Here is the teaser!

Have fun!

Everquest 2 Extended

Being a somewhat long time Everquest 2 player, i was bound to try sooner or later the f2p version of the same, Everquest 2 Extended.

First off, what can a f2p get out of this version of EQ2? Well check out the list here if you want to know. From my point of view the Bronze membership will allow some solid game play out. Experience speaking a Bronze member can reach the level cap, 90, with just the limitation the game offers. I do admit some can be a bit annoying like the bank and gold limits but besides that, it's doable. 

Now what's the trick here then? The fact that you can only use adept gear and only adept spells. This will hinder probably the game play at max level since, first off, DoV rewards are all legendary, so no gear for you. And then all dungeons will require a better geared character, so i guess doing those can be a challenge.

There are several options to break off some limitations from the Bronze member, like buying bank slots or equipment unlock, but that of course, will require some investment.

But if you are interested on giving EQ2 a try, i think this option is a very good one.

Personally i haven't played that much yet, so i haven't noticed any other limitation that could prove hindering. I will try to see how far i can go with not putting any money here.

Back on LOTRO

Since the forced downtime for EQ2 (and all SOE servers for other games), I've taken my time to get some game play off LOTRO.

I've been playing on the Evernight euro server, with a new champion I'm creating, which is now already level 47. I managed to pass those dreaded levels from 20 to 30, doing those boring North-Downs and Lone-lands quests. Eventually i managed to get to the revamped Evendin, which on the contrary to those other 2 zones, was very well done for my satisfaction. All quest hubs were done to make sure all quests you would get, would be nearby each other, to avoid having running all around the map. So that would allow a much more faster income of experience, and faster leveling. There is even a complete set to collect as reward, and token exchange, which is very good for a level 35ish to 40 player. I believe every player who starts this zone around 30, will most probably be done with it around 40. There is lots to do there. And if that isn't enough, to the south of the zone, there is Annúminas which will give players some more quests, some repeatable to grind some tokens, and a big zone to fight off forces of evil. My only regret is that the level 50 set you get from these tokens you acquire in Annúminas, are just a pain to grind. Mostly because you need like more the a thousand of these for just a single piece. That, for a solo player will most likely take near an year to get the full set, which is beyond reasonable. I do realize that this system is made probably thinking on F2P players, who don't have Moria or Mirkwood (at least that's the only reason i think off), but for me it's a shame, cause i would really like to that for my characters also. If Turbine doesn't drop down the prices, why not make those tokens bound on account for another alt? That would be a good option, in my book. There are dungeons in Annúminas that probably would make this process faster, but with no groups to do it, it's hard to get those pieces. And what happens in Annúminas also happens with the other level 50 zones, it's just not worth the effort. And it's just a shame in my opinion...

Besides that, I've been enjoying the ride to Middle-Earth once again. From adventuring to crafting, I've been doing all, and so far it's been great. I do plan on near future to start doing some grouping for instances, because that's what i want to try there. The content group from LOTRO.