PIC OF THE WEEK

7/1: Hey everybody, got lots of new versions of old faces in the guild and old faces that haven't registered in at Guild Magic yet. Do so today so we can see who and what everyone is! It's easy to use and is a great free resource!

6/14: Sorry not much news out there, but there have been some spell changes announced recently:

The "problem" with rain spell pulses always being resisted if they will be the killing blow isn't actually a problem....It's an intentional design feature. The problem was much like the old DOT corpse poof buf. If the Rain killed the NPC and the server was unsure where the damage came from the corpse would poof, so these spells were coded in this manner to prevent that from happening. I'm working with the coders to come up with a better solution. We're all pretty busy right now so unfortunately I can't give you a time frame on when a better solution will be implemented.

Kunark Evac spells: these will now work anywhere in the world. You won't have to be in a Kunark dungeon to use them. This change will apply to both Wizards and Druids evac spells.

Druid Spell Egress: this spell will now work indoors. It didn't make sense for the group version to work indoors (a mistake on our part) and not have the self version work indoors.

Shroud of Death: I added Illusion Skeleton to shroud of death on test server..... I removed it the next day I just didn't get to update spells on test. I forgot that in skeleton form trolls and ogres would lose slam, sorry for the scare. I'll see if I can think up some other way to give SKs skeleton form.

New Translocates: as many of you know there are new translocate spells up on test. I'm not going to comment on these other than to say you can expect that cool cat Al'Kabor to be out and about researching again.

{various misunderstandings and spin about fixing Wizards skipped} New spells will give wizards the ability to prevent NPCs from gating. There will be 3 versions of the spells starting at level 51. They will each have a different resistance type. One of the problems with duration based effects is stacking and negating the need for multiple characters of the same class. I am designing these spells with that in mind. If you want to 100% ensure an NPC does not gate you will need more than one wizard. I understand this may upset some people but the need for multiple wizards to "Anchor" an NPC won't really happen until you fight the more epic mobs with higher hit point numbers. For single group encounters one wizard with these spells should, in most situations, be enough to get the job done. My plan is to get these spells implemented and ready to go before the next patch.

6/5: Verant is gearing up the servers for the appearance of Bertoxxolus, probably the opening of the Plane of Disease, and according to most rumors a large war that will deeply affect many zones. Stay tuned...

5/9: Lets all get together and work out a good time to head down into the Hole! The main reason I have for wanting to do this is that the Hole is HUGE and we haven't seen but a tiny part of it, but Mongor could use a piece out of there, and while we're at it, there's lots of nifty things that drop deep inside. We'll need as many big dudes as we can muster, this is not a safe place.

5/8: Patch Message

• We've made a change to the Velious armor quests. The folks in Kael and in Skyshrine that give out rewards for these quests are now being stricter about who they will reward quest items to. You will have to be considered an 'ally' (see Features section below) by these NPCs in order to be able to complete these quests. If you are doing quests for the Coldain, however, they are somewhat less picky, and they only require that they consider you 'kindly' to reward you for your labors.
• The Black Silk Cape will now drop more frequently.

Bug Fixes

• Attacking with a two-handed piercing weapon will now 'gray-out' the attack button as it should.
• Text that once read: "You cannot remove this affect." now reads "You cannot remove this effect." Changed by popular demand... :)
• Food Emotes: Forcing your character to eat by right clicking food will now properly display the appropriate emote to those in the area.
• Fixed a problem that often made it difficult to loot really large NPCs.

Item Changes

• The Shield of Tsunami can now be equipped in the secondary slot.
• Quivers now reduce the delay time on bows, the better the quiver the faster your bow. We will not be listing the speed increase a quiver will give your bow, but you can tell the good quivers by their ability to reduce the weight of your arrows (better-made or magical quivers have this property).
• The Ivory Handled Falchion should now 'proc' without telling you that it is out of charges. You may need to contact your GM to replace the item with a new version if it is still acting strangely.
• The Opal Bracelet is now a wrist item, not a finger item. Be aware, once you remove it from your finger, it will not go back onto that finger, it will only fit on your wrists, as it should.
• The Large Dragonbone Shard will no longer appear to be a Staff of the Gathering.
• The Ring of Levitation will now poof when all the charges are used up, and should display the correct number of charges.
• The Priceless Velium Reinforced Bow now has a range of 200 instead of a range of 0.
• The Refined Mithril Blade should now be equipable in both primary and secondary slots.
• The Unicorn Horn should now have a graphic.
• The Hammer of Flattening has been changed from tiny to large. This might cause you a little reorganization in your inventory.
• Runebranded Stone Buckler is now labeled as a shield and can be used to bash.
• The Ring of Pureblood is now a finger item, not a waist item.

Spell Changes and Additions

• Translocation spells: Five new Wizard 'push' spells have been added (Translocate: Fay, Tox, North, Combine and Group). Translocate spells send the group to the location, while the Wizard remains behind. Translocate Group sends everyone in the group (except the Wizard) to their own bind points. Translocate Group can be found on NPCs in Velious (and they won't give them up easily). The others are available on an exclusive vendor. All Translocate spells (even the original Translocate) have confirmation boxes that must be accepted before the target will be sent. And Wizards can no longer Translocate themselves.
• Some lower 39th and 44th level Velious spells have had their drop rates increased.
• GM Resurrection has had it's name changed from ResurrectionGM to Customer Service Resurrection so that players will be able to better tell when they are getting a resurrection from the GM staff. GM resurrection will no longer have Res effects, and will leave the newly Ressed with full Hit Points and Mana.
• Divine Aura and spells of that type (Divine Aura - cleric, Divine Barrier - cleric, Kazumi's Note of Preservation - bard, Harmshield - necromancer, Quivering Veil of Xarn - necromancer) will now prevent the caster from being stunned when hit for their duration.
• The Eye of Zomm series of spells will no longer work in Kedge Keep. This change was made to prevent an exploit.

Feature Additions and Changes

• Looting text has been changed. You will now see a -- before and after any loot messages. This has been changed primarily to help prevent any fake looting messages from being thought of as real.
• When you loot an item, you will receive a text message telling you what you have just looted.Expanded Friends List: The Friends List will now hold 30 character names. And each character has its own friends list. You can find and edit this list with a text editor, if you need to, outside the game. You can locate the text files in your EverQuest directory. The files will look like this: _<#>.ini. The default Friends List for existing and new characters will be your old Friends List.
• The destroy or drop item confirmation box will now close if you accidentally pick up another item while they are open. This should prevent accidentally deleting or dropping the wrong item.
• When selling to a merchant, you can no longer sell items that are inside a container by having the container selected and clicking the sell button. The merchant will tell you that you need to empty the container before the merchant will buy it. This should prevent folks from accidentally selling items that they did not know were in those containers.
• You can now move items around inside containers that are in the bank.
• There is a new /consider message: "regards you as an ally". This is the highest level of friendliness that an NPC will register using the /consider command. The faction required to reach this rating is significantly higher than 'warmly'.

5/1: Guildmagic page! If you haven't done so, swing over to Guild Magic and get your profile set up on there. It lets you fill in your character information, update it on your own, and even has room for your skills and picture. There will no longer be maintained here a guild membership page, we will rely on this service entirely. So if you want to let people know what guild you are part of here's the place to go!

I am a proud member of