2001 01 17

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January 17, 2001  3:00 am
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*Baltimore Fan Faire - Last Chance*

Monday is the registration deadline for the Baltimore Fan Faire! We are 
almost sold out so hurry and visit 
http://everquest.station.sony.com/fanfaire/fanfaire.html before you 
miss your chance to attend this event!

*Patch Day*

The primary focus of today's patch is to implement changes noted in the 
new Producer's Letter which can be found at 
http://everquest.station.sony.com/news/letter.shtml

It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you read the Producer's Letter before 
playing EverQuest. It contains some unprecedented and exciting 
enhancements to gameplay.

In addition to these changes, the following changes have been 
implemented:

*Bug Fixes*

- Fixed a bug that caused "root" and "snare" type spells to function 
incorrectly when stacked. They should now stack properly.
- Fixed a bug that negated the "instrument modifier" for bards using 
Selo's, causing them to run slower than they otherwise would. 
- Fixed a bug that allowed two or more spells that grant levitation to 
stack. Levitation spells should not stack.
- The "Track Corpse" spell now works.
- Tracked down and eliminated several bugs that were causing a very 
small percentage of people to crash when zoning or upon entering the 
game.
- Fixed a problem with some Ulthork armor that caused it to disappear 
on death if the wearer was of extremely low level.
- Tserrina's Whip has been fixed. If you received one prior to today's 
patch, you will need to trade out your whip with a GM in order to get 
one that works correctly.
- Last week's patch attempted to fix Celestial Elixir, Celestial 
Healing, and Torpor, so that they would stack another similar spell, 
unintentionally causing it to stop stacking with standard regeneration 
spells. This has been fixed. The downside to this fix is that these 
spells will now overwrite the "Call of Bones" series. As the three 
former spells are cast to save a character's life, this solution 
appears to be the most beneficial for all of those involved. 
- The stronger /lootnodrop options will no longer prompt you for 
confirmation when looting your own corpse. It is highly suggested that 
everyone reset their option to the strongest security available: 
/lootnodrop ALWAYS (always ask for confirmation).
- Added some code to address an issue reported by a few players, that 
being that an NPC named "Ragefire" would die and not leave a corpse. 
Though we were unable to reproduce this problem in testing, the code we 
added should function as a catch-all for this problem. Please be sure 
to let us know how this goes.


*Changes/Enhancements*

- While not mentioned in the Producer's Letter, the Zone Experience 
Modifier has also been increased in Guk (guktop), by roughly 12%.
- "Lay on Hands" has been enhanced again to heal more hitpoints.
- Overlooked in the last patch message, new spells were made available 
to Rangers and Paladins in the upper levels. 
- "Voice of the Berserker", a beneficial spell, no longer drains mana 
over the duration of the spell.
- The maximum duration of "Strength of Nature" has been increased.
- A new spell for magicians is now available in game.
- The "Shield of the Eighth" spell will now last a number of minutes 
equal to your level.
- You can now use the arrow and enter keys to select characters in the 
character select screen. In addition, the last character you chose will 
be automatically hilighted when entering that screen. This value is 
stored in the EQCLIENT.INI file as "LastCharSel=0-7"
- The ranger's "Trueshot" discipline has had its damage increased after 
analyzing data from its fix last week. Prior to the last patch, all 
bows, while under the discipline, were hitting as if they were 45dmg 
bows regardless of the delay. Last week's patch fixed it so that damage 
was based on the damage of the bow. This weeks patch increases damage 
bonuses in relation to delay (longer delays yield better damage 
bonuses). 
- You can now reverse the left and right channels on your speakers 
using the /reversesound command. This should be very useful for those 
who have had to place their speakers backwards due to cable lengths.
- Made some improvements to Paw, Mistmoore, and The Hole, to address 
some concerns brought forth by the players. Both zones had some 
problems that would cause them to be exceedingly difficult in some 
cases.

- The EverQuest Team