June 22, 2000 9:00 am
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***Today's Updates***
*The Hole*
We are pleased to announce the opening of The Hole, a high-level
dungeon on the continent of Odus. The Hole is a complementary addition
to EverQuest, available to all subscribers regardless of their Kunark
status. The files necessary to enter The Hole are available via the
"Optional Patch" button at the bottom of the patch program interface.
The files are quite large (about 9MB total), so if the download is
going slowly, you may want to postpone downloading the files until
later.
As mentioned above, The Hole is a high-level dungeon, designed to
support characters starting at about level 40. It should be regarded as
extremely dangerous. As a note, jumping in The Hole from Paineel is NO
LONGER A SHORTCUT TO TOXXULIA FOREST. The GMs will not recover corpses
for people who fall, or jump, or attempt to levitate into The Hole.
*Vallon Zek is now Coin-Only*
As we announced earlier this week, due to the number of people
specifying interest in "coin-only" loot on Vallon Zek, versus those
wishing to retain item- loot, we have implemented "coin-only" looting
rules for PvP combat on Vallon Zek.
*Resurrection*
Previously, players had to be resurrected within two hours after death
in order to receive any experience back as part of the resurrection.
Due to the increased size and difficulty associated with Kunark zones,
we've raised this limit from two hours to three. This should assist
players and make it easier for them to obtain an experience-returning
resurrection within the time limit.
*Warping*
We put in some code that should help decrease the "ghosting" (NPCs
appearing to be some place they aren't) being reported in some of the
larger Kunark zones. Please let us know how this goes.
*Locked Doors*
We noticed few weeks ago that it is common practice to use NPCs to open
locked doors rather than by using the services of someone that is able
to pick locks. In order to protect and increase the value of the
abilities of the lock-picking classes, NPCs have gained the ability to
walk through locked doors without opening them.
*Vox and Nagafen*
Over the past couple of weeks, we've received more and more reports of
these dragons being bested by smaller and smaller groups of higher-
level (high 50s) adventurers. As we've always felt that Dragons should
be special encounters that require a large number of people, we were
left with some choices.
One choice available to us was to increase the power of the dragons to
a level where the level 60 folks would find them challenging. This
would have the disadvantage of forever placing them out-of-reach for
those who did not buy Kunark, and place them further out-of-reach for
those who did, but are just now approaching the levels where they could
go on Dragon raids. Another possible solution was to make the dragons
flee (depop) when engaged by a more powerful group of people. This
would have the undesired effect of allowing some people to deny others
the experience of fighting a dragon.
Instead of raising the bar as mentioned above, we've instead decided
that dragons, or at least these two dragons, should have the magical
ability to pick their own fights. Players of level 53 or above will now
encounter some difficulty when attempting to assist in combat with
these dragons. This should help 40s and low 50-level characters with
their chances to encounter a dragon without worry of getting forced out
by much higher level players. In addition, it also has the added effect
of creating a natural progression from the younger dragons of Antonica
to the elder and more formidable dragons of Kunark.
-The EverQuest Team
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