Good news! The Steward of Drinal now has Tier 2 Heroic gear available. Platinum prices on the Tier 1 Steward gear have been lowered. Greater Spirits and essences have also had their drop rates increased.

See this and other tutorial videos in this series now on the EverQuest II YouTube Channel!

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Today, EQ2U is happy to announce the introduction of the Gear Report!

We’ve heard from a number of guilds that hand-maintain such a spreadsheet, but there has been a growing desire to be able to automate such a view. Errrorr was the catalyst for this feature as he showed me a screenshot of the stats that their guild tracks for each character. Then I stumbled upon Soresha‘s EQ2 Data site where she has built quite a bit of this functionality for her guild. But we wanted to expand this idea outside of Guilds and allow any group of characters, even Guild Alliances, to build lists of characters and view their stats at a glance.

So how do you access this Gear Report feature?

First up, the Housing and Leaderboards windows have been merged into a new megawindow. From Ahma:

We’ve added a new window: Housing and Leaderboards. This UI element, which can be accessed via the EQII menu and from the Housing and Leaderboards buttons to the right of the EQII menu, combines some old windows and allows easy access to many housing related features. It allows you to manipulate all your current houses, browse and buy new houses, visit houses associated with the current zone you are in, and view the current housing leaderboards. Please check it out and give us your feedback!

Next, the monthly Moonlight Enchantments event is gaining 2 new quests and 23 new item rewards:

• “Comforting Confections” – Speak with Shasta Evergreen in the Enchanted Zygomyd Grotto
• “Blooming Good Tea” – Speak with Odeyana in the Enchanted Fay Grotto

With Game Update 66 and the introduction of Siren’s Grotto, it’s now time to bump up the quality of heroic gear a bit. To do that, Drinal’s Steward as started offering Tier 2 heroic armor. From Amnerys on the EQ2 Forums:

Good news! The Steward of Drinal now has Tier 2 Heroic gear available. Platinum prices on the Tier 1 Steward gear have been lowered. Greater Spirits and essences have also had their drop rates increased.

This is indeed good news, as there is certainly room for growth and a need to provide an obvious upgrade over the Advanced Solo rare drops.

However there are a few hiccups too. On the EQ2 Forums, players have renewed their objections to needing to run the 15 hour Chains of Eternity Solo Signature Quest line on each of their alts in order to shop Drinal’s Steward’s wares. While we’ve been able to buy a Steward’s Key to share the Obol and Spirit love with our alts, this key has never unlocked the ability to buy from the Merchant. Thus far, the workaround for buying armor has been to swap characters around and trade it through the Shared Bank. However this won’t work with Tier 2 gear upgrades.

Residents of Antonia Bayle! The fourth annual Faydwer Faire, a player run roleplaying event, is upon us!

Here is a letter from Skyana with more information:

Spring, a time of new beginnings, when people emerge from winter’s isolation to revel in warming sunshine and the fresh green of the world. Hearts are light, the air is sweet and song fills the air. It is no different in Faydwer and deep in the lush growth that is the forest of Greater Fayedark, the reborn city of Kelethin prepares to celebrate this time of year. The last of Autumn’s leaves are swept clear from the platforms, repairs are made from Winter storms and beyond Sapling Spur, the Nursery fills with unfurling blooms.

Queen Amree makes an appearance on her lofty platform, gazing out over the city originally built by the Feir’Dal, the elegant Fae spreads her wings to let the sun warm them. Spring, and even her thoughts are on the Faire, that celebration of survival and hope that so keeps lofty Kelethin alive. "Once more Tunare has blessed and kept us, my people, we should thank her!" She smiles through the expectant hush, knowing that the release of suspense would have her Fae citizens bursting through the trees with excitement. "We shall celebrate with a grand fair, inviting all who desire to join us in a festival of friendship and song!"

Before the last fluttered glimpse of her wings disappears into her grand nutshell, posters bloom over Kelethin, then spread to the far lands proclaiming the Faydwer Faire shall be held the 17, 18 and 19th of this month. All Kelethin would be decorated for the event and people were invited to join the citizens in games, shows, and song.

Won’t you join us at the Faire?

(The annual Faydwer Faire will be held this year from May 17-19 in Kelethin on the Antonia Bayle server. In game please /join Festival and online go to www.faydwerfaire.comfor more information about the Faire and scheduled events. This is an open air RP event that is open to everyone and run by the RP community of Antonia Bayle.)

As a part of our fifth anniversary year, we’ve added a new feature to Legends of Norrath: Loremaster!

Loremaster is a new leveling system within Legends of Norrath. As a Loremaster, you’ll achieve status and bragging rights, as well as the opportunity to score really cool bonus loot!

Bonus Loot

So as I level up as a Loremaster, what can I get and how?

Here’s how the system will work. Every time you pull a loot card in a Legends of Norrath booster pack (either packs your purchase or free, promotional packs you receive such as your Gold Member bonus) you receive a chance of getting an additional loot card from a special selection of previously released loot cards from booster packs and promos. If you want to see the list of Loremaster bonus loot cards, you can find them in the Collection Manager rarity menu.

Loremaster

Here’s how it works.

There’s a new button on the side bar of the LON home screen called Profile. This is a rework of some of the player settings from other menus. Now, these options are found in a single button.

When you click this, you’ll see your profile as well as the section for Loremaster!

Let’s break down the Loremaster section of the player Profile.

This is your LON name, your Loremaster Level (4), your chance of getting Bonus loot (2.0%), your % chance when you hit your next level (2.5%), your level bar, current XP for this level (76 XP), total XP for this level (111 XP) and how much XP you have remaining until the next level (35 XP).

Then we come to the two tabs: Journal and History.

Journal

This is the list of achievements that you can complete in Legends of Norrath.

Each Journal entry gives you valuable information about what activities you can perform. Let’s look at the first entry.

• Icon – The icon will give you some clue as to what type of achievement it is.
• Counter – This achievement may be completed once on this account so it is 1/1. Others have higher limits like 1/10 and some are unlimited.
• Name – This is the name of the achievement with a sub-line describing what you need to perform.
• XP – This is the XP that is granted each time that you complete this achievement.
• Date – This is the date you last score this achievement.

The achievements above have all been started or finished so they show up in bright colors. Achievements that have yet to be completed will look this way.

Sometimes we will offer bonus XP on select items. To make it easy to identify which items have bonus XP, we will highlight those in blue and indicate that there is a bonus.

]

History
The History tab shows you what you’ve done, how many points you received, and when you did it.

This list is sortable by XP, Title and date completed so you can keep track of your Loremaster achievements.

Back grants
Something else to note is that for players of Legends of Norrath that have made progress in the single player expansion scenarios, you will be automatically back granted the completion achievements for that play. This means many of you will log into Legends of Norrath and automatically be anywhere from Level 1 to Level 9! Congrats on being ahead of the curve! These are the only activities that will be back granted. The rest you will need to complete.

Conclusion
We hope you enjoy this new element in Legends of Norrath. We plan on adding additional achievements within the next couple of months. If you have any ideas or feedback, please let us know in the Legends of Norrath forums!

An eternal optimist might say that leaving it up to players to decide whether to destroy the item to salvage the adornment is part of a longer term strategy to bring choice and hard decisions back to EQ2 itemization after years of streamlining.

While a growing number of Adornment Dislodgers have become available since the Chains of Eternity expansion launched, their cost has kept them out of reach for many players. Especially the obscenely expensive Superb Prismatic Adornment Dislodger which is one of the few types which preserves the item AND a choice of one adornment.

With today’s update, the aforementioned Superb Prismatic Adornment Dislodger will drop from 1,000 plat to 250 plat. Further, EQ2 designers have posted that some cheaper adornment removers are on the way.

Then over time, recast times on Guild Hall and Call Home spells got shorter, and travel restrictions lessened. Then came a major streamlining which eliminated all bells (and carpets) in favor of a single universal World Travel Bell on almost every dock which will take you almost anywhere in Norrath.

Eventually, players were able to purchase stacks of five Portable Globe of Swift Travel that allow us to summon a World Travel Bell anywhere. If you thought the streamlining was finished, you’d be wrong. It looks like those portable globes are about to undergo “point of need” streamlining. On Test, you can now click on your Map and travel, for a fee.

From the EQ2 Test Forums:

Greetings Testers,

Today’s Test update brings instant travel! You can now click on your map, click on the Quick Access Teleport button in the upper-right corner, and choose where you want to go.

This feature will cost Station Cash once it hits the other servers but it is currently free for you to check out on Test. Please play around with it and give us your feedback!

Thank you.

EQ2Wire Comment: Undoubtedly, the introduction of this feature will coincide with the removal of those Portable Globes, so I’d stock up now.

UPDATE from Ahma:

To clarify this, instant travel will only allow you to go to existing travel locations (druid rings, wizard spires, and bells). Beyond those, you will not be able to choose a specific location within a zone.