October
20, 2002 - Brace for Impact!
Those of
you who have been with EQTC since the launch of Luclin (or before),
know that things are about to get VERY busy around here. The
site will load more slowly as thousands of eager folks
try to get the most up-to-date information on the new recipes,
vendors, etc. The boards will also be hit extremely hard.
I, and the rest of the EQTC staff, will be sifting through tons
of posts, trying to cobble together complete and accurate recipe
listings and vendor listings, (as well as dealing with any of
the curve balls that real life seems to like throwing at times
like this).
What can
the rest of you do to help as Planes of Power launches tomorrow?
(Yes, we know most folks won't get their software until Tuesday
...)
- Be patient
- the site and boards will likely load more slowly, as you
won't be the only one eager for information. Excited folks
will likely be mis-posting anywhere and everywhere in their
desire to be "first" to report in information, and
tempers will get quickly frayed. It will take time
for information to be processed from the boards and put on
the site. Reloading 10 times in half an hour won't change
that fact, and likely will make updates even slower, as we
have to wade through that same slow loading time to read the
information and push updates to the site.
- Be complete
and accurate - if you don't provide all the necessary information
in your post, you can't expect the information on the site
to be correct. You're also likely making more work for the
staff as we respond to your post asking for clarification
(vendor name, loc, exact inventory, etc., etc.)
- Watch
where you're posting - I'm setting up two temporary forums,
much like we did for Luclin. One forum will be for general
questions, comments, and conversation. A second forum is ONLY
for recipes, trivials and vendor data. Any stray conversation
in the recipes foum WILL be deleted. As with any "data
only" sticky threads in the various forums, we will be
actively enforcing this, as it speeds up the process of getting
information from the message boards onto the main site.
- Be patient.
Yes, this bears repeating ... and repeating ... and repeating.
If you're relatively new to the site, you may be surprised
at what happens on the site and the boards in the next week
or so. If you've been with EQTC for a year or more, you likely
can guess how crazed it's about to be around here.
It's going
to be a horrifically busy time for the site, but with the help
of the community, it will hopefully be one of the smoother expansions
with regards to the level of chaos it brings to the site.
For those
who hadn't noticed, the Oct. 16 patch had a stealth "gift"
for tradeskillers with regards to a new general AA ability.
Those tradeskillers that are level 51 or higher, are allowed
to spend 3 AA points to train in New Tanaan Crafting Mastery.
This allows them to bring a second main tradeskill (baking,
smithing, brewing, fletching, jewelcraft, pottery, tailoring)
above the 200 cap. With the expenditure of more points, GM tradeskillers
can bring others of these skills above the 200 mark as well.
In other
news, the talented Verdandi has done some major updates to the
quest page for the
8th Coldain Prayer shawl. Those of you working on this quest,
or preparing to start on it may want to print out the newly-updated
pages.
October
16 , 2002 - Patch Day
Today's
patch message has a couple items in it that I'd like to highlight:
- Made it slightly easier to get skill increases while doing
Tailoring, Tinkering, Smithing, Baking, Brewing and Alchemy.
Made it slightly more difficult to get skill increases with
Pottery and Fletching
- Levitation can no longer be cast on Traders in the Bazaar
We're trying
to keep from having multiple threads in the same forum discussing
the skill increase change, so please try to contain discussion
to this
message board thread. If you're one of those folks that
feels the need to run around in circles screaming "nerf!"
at the drop of any hat, you'll find there's a thread
already up in the Primal Scream forum regarding this. However,
remember that the board posting rules DO apply in there, and
we DO enforce those rules, so watch your manners. On Sunday,
I'll likely create two new temporary forums for PoP talk and
PoP recipes, but for now, those of you wishing to discuss/speculate
on PoP before it is released next week will find that we're
limiting discussion to two threads until launch: one
thread for discussion/speculation, and one for those
of you who feel the need to vent over things that still can/might
be changed before launch. ;)
We know
folks get excited when new changes are coming, but hope that
you'll all think about the fact that the upcoming expansion
is going to put a HUGE stress on the site, on the boards, and
on the staff. Please do your part to look for sticky topics
and the like before you post "new" information - it
really does save us a lot of time (Time which can then be used
getting updates onto the site quickly, and to continue to chip
away at the huge mass of information we're building into the
database.).
October
6 , 2002 - Whoops!
As those
of you who filled my mailbox today know, the site was unavailable/lagging
for a bit today. Racknine was nice enough to do some php acceleration
on the server that houses EQTrader Corner and other sites. Unfortunately,
the poor thing had a runaway cache, and brought things to their
knees. It's been fixed, thankfully, so things should be good
now.
October
3 , 2002 - Message Board Downtime
EZBoard
has had some hardware issues that have resulted in dowtime for
the message boards. I'd not put a message up here, as I'd expected
them back up by now. The newest ETA, however, is tonight. If
I get any new updates, I will post them here.
September
17 , 2002 - Thank you, Refplace!
I wanted
to take a few moments to give my heartfelt thanks to Refplace
for the "home" that they gave the site as an EQPortal
Community during some tough times. While load and database
issues have caused us to move over to Racknine for our hosting,
I cannot stress enough how much I appreciate the aid that Rory
gave us in our time of need. It is very likely that EQTC would
have had to close it's doors (or be merged into one of the fee-based
sites) well before Luclin launched, if not for the site hosting
home that he provided.
For those
of you who are wondering, yes, the site move has increased our
costs, and costs will continue to grow, especially once PoP
launches in another month and a half (Luclin more than doubled
our site traffice for a while, and increased message board traffic
10-fold.) However, we hope to continue managing to tread
water financially, thanks to those of you that are clicking
on that PayPal icon over to the left, and making donations.
Time will tell. In the meantime, we will continue our struggle
to keep the site as ad-free as possible.
September
15 , 2002 - Moving woes
With little
ado, DNS was changed today to point to our new hosting provider
at Racknine, catching many of us by surprise (I'd expected it
to take another week or so for the paperwork to be finished.)
If you can read this message, then the nameserver that you use
has the new information. It also means that you've likely seen
some craziness with nav buttons today, due to a case-sensitive
issue on some links. I think I caught them all, but there
may be a couple holdovers for a day or two as I go over everything
with a fine-toothed comb.
September
13 , 2002 - Message board issues
It seems
we got moved onto yet another EZBoard server. Please change
your bookmarks for the boards to http://go.ezboard.com/beqtraderscorner.
If you find yourself having problems with that URL, then try
http://pub38.ezboard.com/beqtraderscorner.
September
9 , 2002 - Random updates
Rumors that
the Terrorantula, 8-legged menace of the Southern Desert of
Ro, has been reproducing have been verified. While they may
be a bit easier to take on than their mother, they're still
tougher than your average dune tarantula. Fortunately for all
of us, they also drop terrorantula silk, long-prized by the
Erudites for durability in cultural
tailoring.
Rogues
around the lands rejoice! The secrets to the grandmaster
assasin's trophy have been unlocked.
While we're
not ready to give out an ETA on the new database, we are
ready to start asking for more concerted help on gathering information
on the thousands of items that need to go into it. If you are
interested in helping, please visit the DenMom's
Help Wanted forum on the boards.
September
4 , 2002 - Patch Day!
Some days
it's the little things in life that make you dance around, sometimes
it's the big. I'll let you all decide for yourselves where you
put the following updates. (Note: more information may be added
to this later in the day, but this is what the sleep-depreived
halfling has found so far):
- jars
of acid stack
- jars
of lacquer stack
- low
quality rockhopper hides can now be used for making leather
padding. I also verified that dropping a medium quality rockhopper
hide into the sewing kit with a skinning knife does yield
low quality rockhopper hides. (I've not tested high quality
hides yet, but I'm presuming the downward conversion is working
for them as well)
- stormreaper
chainwoven skirt now fits properly in the waist slot
- tired
of trying to tell half your guild what the starts are on some
brand new tradeskill item are? You can now give them a hotlink
with a few extra keyclicks! In main chat, start your message
to the appropriate chat channel (/gu, /auction, various created
chat channels, etc.), alt-left click on the item you want
to announce, click on the icon of the item in the item description
box that you just caused to open, and it should drop the item
name as a hotlink, into your current line of chat text. If
these instructions make little sense, then find someone less
sleep-impaired to explain it to you. ;)
Over the
next few weeks, I'll be knuckling down and beating the database
into submission more (no ETA on when you folks will see it yet,
but it will definitely be worth the wait), and dealing with
a lot of IRL stuff, so if I'm unusually quiet for the next few
weeks, don't be surprised. Expect to see me post more
pleas for information as I get
stuck trying to find certain tidbits.
August
29, 2002
We're back!
I know many of you were pacing nervously earlier this week when
you couldn't reach the site - you weren't alone! Thankfully,
the dead router that caused the outage for us, EQPortal and
others was either repaired or replaced yesterday afternoon.
Just in time, of course, for my DSL connection to die for several
hours. (Which is partly why this update is a day late.)
While I
haven't received direct word regarding the VI stance on custom
UI mods, EQ
toolbox has an interview with a senior editor at VI regarding
them. For those of you working on tradeskill mods, there are
multiple threads in the General Tradeskills Forum regarding
them. One thing to note is that if you're going to do screenshots,
direct copies of the data/layout from this site, please make
sure that it also contains the URL to this site in the
mod. Not only will this let folks who use your mod know where
to find updated recipes, trivials, etc., but it will keep you
from having an upset redheaded DenMother chasing after you for
redistributing copyrighted information without permission. ;)
Look for
news next week on our decision regarding EZBoard renewal. I've
seen the newest "estimates" for a 6-month renewal,
and it's going to cost over 3 times what it cost a year ago
to renew for a year. (Yes, we've grown that much in traffic.)
We may decide to renew (in which case we'll be asking for donations),
or we may decide to host our own boards (in which case it we'll
also be asking for donations, but likely have a different target
amount, etc.). We're not sure yet, and while folks have been
full of all sorts of helpful suggestions and commentary, we're
going to think on it a bit longer before we make a decision.
Given the hassles inherent with the second option, we may end
up biting the bullet and paying the $1910 to renew ... or have
those of you who are not EZBoard Community Supporters deal with
ads when you hit the boards for a while. ... bleargh!
August
19, 2002 - Quick note from EQAtlas
I received
the following from Muse at EQAtlas:
SOE recently began promoting their new book, the Everquest
Atlas, and some of you have expressed to me some confusion
regarding this. Despite the similarity between the name of
this product and their use of "EQ Atlas" to advertise
it on the Everquest Live site, the product is not related
in any way to my site, EQ Atlas (www.eqatlas.com). While we
both offer maps and descriptions, the specific content is
quite different. I hope that this announcement will clear
up any confusion.
Thanks,
Muse
August
17, 2002 - A Word of Warning
It's
come to my attention that one (or more) folks are sending
out suspect file attachments and spoofing the sender id to niami@eqtraders.com.
If you receive such an email, DO NOT download the file attachment.
It is not from me. I have never, and will never send out
email using that email address. Look VERY carefully at the
email headers and return path, and it's likely that you can
find the true source of the email. I recommend that if
you're internet-savvy enough to find the real sender, that you
forward the email to the mail abuse mailbox for that domain
(such as abuse@earthlink.net), so that they are aware that someone
is likely using their mail service to distribute viruses/trojan
horse software using someone else's name. Addendum: it's been
pointed out that it's also possible that someone has been hit
with the KLEZ family of viruses, and that they are unaware that
their machine is sending out additional infected files to/from
various addy's on their hard drive. Regardless, always be very
careful when downloading file attachments.
August
1 4, 2002 - Another Patch Day
Well, the
webserver is unwell this morning, so I'm not sure when folks
will get to see this update, but here's what we've got so far
with regards to tradeskills and the patch:
- the noodles recipe now works! Keep an eye on the
baking forum for any up-to-the-minute discoveries on the
various yields, as well as recipes requiring noodles
- casserole dish sketches now stack. This is indeed happy
news for the potters that are making casserole dishes to go
with our noodles
- plains pebbles stack at last! Foragers around Norrath are
heaving sighs of relief as their overloaded packs get a bit
of relief
- in other pack-happy news, black acrylia now stacks
- the adding items to stacks issue that caused you to pick
up the entire stack when trying to drop an item into the stack,
has been fixed
- the bazaar search function now lets you see an alphabetic
listing of traders
Other items
with this patch include druid/wizzie ports from anywhere to
various locations on the moon, a fix to the tracking box, and
much more. See the
complete patch message here. Happy tradeskilling!
July
24, 2002 - Patch Day
Today's
patch is quite large, so it will likely be a while before we
catch and mention everything in it that impacts tradeskills.
While I sift through the many posts on the subject, here are
a few things of note:
- The
new UI has been released, including the bazaar functionality.
Remember that you must set "newui=TRUE" in your
eqclient.ini file before you can buy or sell using
the new bazaar trader functions.
- The
Jaggedpine zone has been released (it is an optional patch,
so you must actively ask for it under the Advanced options
when loading EQ). The baking forum already has a thread
started for new recipes and trivials from this zone.
- Stats
on stat drinks are reported as working.
- Faydwer was updated with quests for young adventurers. Information
on the quests can be found in the Quests message board under
the following threads: Felwithe
Newbie Quests, Kelethin
Newbie Quests, and Kaladim
Newbie Quests. I'll give it a day or two before I make
up quests pages for all of these.
- Cazic-Thule tailored items did not get an expected
upgrade with this patch.
That looks
to be about it on the updates for today, other than the decomissioning
of the May 8 recipes page at long last. (All recipes stemming
from the May 8 patch should now be on their permanent recipes
pages.)
July
15, 2002 - Happy Belated Anniversary to /gu
comics! -
I know I'm
a tad slow, because this actually happened last week, but I'd
like to take a moment to wish Woody
and his humorous comics of EQ life a happy 2-year anniversary.
I'm very pleased that Woody has allowed me to display several
of his tradeskill-related comics around the EQTC site, and happy
to see him still producing those wonderful comics. Some days,
we need to be able to find a giggle or three, and his panels
"do the trick."
In other
news, Mennix of "Dear
Mennix" fame has decided to turn the tables on some
of the sites that have traditionally cornered VI staff for interviews,
and has started his own interview series with various EQ "community
leaders". Perhaps he decided to start "easy"
with a fellow halfling, or perhaps he's getting even for a stray
toe-fur comment, but it seems I'm first
in the limelight. Och! ;)
July
12, 2002
Just a few
quick things...
The fish
& game wardens in Erud's Crossing are happy to announce
that their efforts to reintroduce barren flounder into the waters
have been successful. (i.e., Erud's Crossing was patched today)
Erudite clerics of the non-evil persuasion can now join their
priestly bretheren in the possession of a coveted Faithstone.
(Note: folks on the Quellious
server apparently did not get the zone patch and are still fishing
up Timorous Tuna. The other servers, so far, seem to have been
restocked properly.)
The mysteries
of Cazic Thule tailoring
continue to unravel ... so to speak.
Those of
you who have seen stats of items on other sites and have come
here looking for the recipes may find that the following will
aid in your search:
- Those
looking for "Luminate" armor (as per Alla'khazam's
and EQ'Lizer)
really want to look for "Luminant" heraldic armor,
which is Human
Cultural, Qeynos.
- Those
of you looking for Stormreaper Chainwoven or Stormreaper Steelwoven
will not that it is not smithed (as per EQ'Lizer).
These items are made via halfling
cultural tailoring. (It seems their data entry
gnomes are a tad busy right now, but these will get fixed
in their database soon).
- Those
of you looking for Tae Ew items, the tailored Tae Ew goodies
are still on the Cazic
Thule recipes page.
- If you're
looking for ___ Heraldic armor, or "that new Veeshan
bard armor", you'll find it, again, under human
cultural, Qeynos
July
3, 2002 - Unburying!
Well, it's
a week later than I'd originally planned, but my new home office
furniture is finally installed, and I've got the 2 PCs and the
laptop set back up. It's going to take me quite a while to get
the CDs, documentation, maps, knicknacks, unpacked, sorted and
put into their new spots, but I'm already enjoying the feeling
of "space" that the new layout gives me. (The extra
storage space will also come in handy, as I'm definitely a packrat!)
Meanwhile,
I'm sure you folks are more interested in what's going on tradeskill-wise,
so here's a small update for you. Barren Flounder, that had
been chased into virtual extinction by the introduction of Timorous
Tuna into their spawning grounds back in November, have been
seen once again in Erud's Crossing on Test server. This is wonderful
news for the "good" erudite clerics, who have been
unable to enjoy the use of faithstones that their other healing
brethren have been using. Hopefully it will be re-introduced
onto the live servers with the next patch. We're also hoping
to see a few other item tweaks next patch, such as to the stats
of the Cazic Thule armor and weapons, stackability of Tae Ew
meat, etc.
As time
and oomph permit, I'm going through all the
armor stats pages to see what's missing for the older smithed
armor sets. As I'm finding missing data, the relevant stats
page is having question marks added in the appropriate spots,
and on the more major information, I'm whimpering
for help on data that I can't find elsewhere. After I tackle
all the armors (I'm about a third of the way through the cultural
sets now), I'll tackle the smithed weapons. Those of you with
a solid player-made weapon collection are more than welcome
to compare what's on the weapon stats page with the information
on your weapons, and post with missing information in that same
message board thread.
My thanks
to Fallenhero for the new art at the top of this page. We try
very hard to keep the site fast-loading, without a lot of extra
frufru, but it's amazing how a couple tiny files make a difference.
:)
For the
Americans amongst us, may you have a happy and safe Independence
Day tomorrow.
June
26, 2002 - Mischief and Mayhem
Fortunately,
things are relatively quiet on the tradeskill front right now.
Discussion of the new EQ interface that is currently on Test
can be found via this
message board thread. Some progress has been made at last
on sorting out the Cazic
Thule recipes. As always, a lot of updates are going on
behind the scenes on a daily basis, especially in narrowing
down smithing trivials, adding stats for the newer tradeskill
items, etc. A few weeks back, I also had to split apart the
cultural armor stats from the main armor stats page. This has
caused quite a bit of confusion, and it's currently not the
most elegant or intuitive layout, but it will have to do for
the near future. For now, all smithed cultural armor stats can
be found a) via the nav buttons on the left-hand side of the
main armor
stats page and, b) via a link at the TOP of each cultural
recipes page for that culture's stats. I apologize for the kludgy
feel of this, but it's going to be a while before I can tackle
nav issues.
This brings
me to the mischief and mayhem portion of this update. I've been
dual-wielding computers for quite a while now, as it allows
me to work on site updates at the same time I am performing
research in-game, wield both my accounts at once to have easier
access to tradeskill mules, etc. Unfortunately, the setup I've
been using for the last couple of years is not ergonomic, and
hasn't been very good for my chronic back problems. We finally
made arrangements to have both my office and Ngreth's office
redone, with setups that should make them much more comfortable
workplaces. We've been planning this for a couple months, and
yesterday the movers arrived to box up everything in my office,
so the folks could come in today with the custom setup for my
office. Ngreth's office was to follow next Tuesday. Unfortunately,
some wires were crossed somewhere (I blame Bristlebane, may
all his toe fur fall off!), and the installers showed up today
with Ngreth's office setup, not mine. They're not even
done building mine. Soooo ... Ngreth and two installers are
busy disassembling Ngreth's old office right now and packing
it up, most of my office possessions are taking over the guest
room, my cats are frantic and hiding from the chaos, and I ...
am working off a card table set up in my almost-empty office.
I'll be working off this setup until Tuesday morning, at which
time I re-disassemble everything and pray there are no more
surprises in store. (edit: hubby's office is taking 2 days to
complete, so I expect mine will as well ... wheeeeee).
{gibber}
Needless
to say, I'll likely get less accomplished than normal for the
next few days.
June
12, 2002 - Patch Day ... seen with "new" eyes
I'm back
from my lasik surgery at last, though the trip home took 6 hours
instead of 2 due to an accident closing off the highway we came
home on. I'm exhausted, and going to avoid taxing my energy
levels, much less my "new" eyes, so site updates WILL
wait until tomorrow. Please, please, PLEASE in the meantime,
remember to READ before you post your questions and comments
in the various forums, especially since it sounds like everyone's
been posting helter-skelter over there. The more mayhem folks
make in the "data only" threads, the longer it's going
to take me to get things updated tomorrow. For those who haven't
caught it yet, here's what was tradeskill-related from the patch
message:
** Trade Skills **
- Improved many of the smithed Acrylia items
- Large Blocks, Blocks, and Small Blocks of Magic Clay are
now stackable
- Brick of Deathsteel Ore is now stackable
- Several blacksmithed cultural armor set pieces have received
a slight improvement to their armor class.
- Tarnished and Fine Steel Weapons may now be recycled into
ore by placing them into a forge with
a water flask.
Other items of note:
- Acrylia Reinforced Armor is now usable by short races
- Shadowhaven Faction Amulet should be more useful now
- Loremaster Borannin should be responding properly again
It's very
likely that you folks now know more about the effects from this
patch than I do, and it will stay that way until tomorrow. Please
remember to post trivial and stat updates to the proper spots
in the message boards (there are threads already started in
the Smithing forum) ... and watch those vents that are starting
to pop up with inappropriate language and/or in inappropriate
spots, please.
June
10, 2002
Just a
few quick updates:
Cazic-Thule
jewelcraft has been deciphered, and the first pieces have been
successfully made. Recipes and stats are on the Cazic-Thule
recipes page.
The dust
is finally starting to slowly settle from the June 5 patch and
all the changes to smithing trivials. It's still going to take
a while to get it all updated, but we're getting there. For
all of those asking on the various forums, as far as we know
only smithing trivials were changed.
There's
another patch this Wednesday. Hopefully the rockhoppers and
sambata that share a cave in Dawnshroud Peaks will find their
way home again, as well as a few other spawn issues. :) We'll
have more of an update Wednesday.
We received
the following suggestion on our Quests message board, and there's
already been responses that it does help when having problems
with quest NPCs:
If any
NPC is not responding to direct text do this. Clear your target
window and say the quest text. For some reason they will respond
when you do NOT have them targeted. So just make sure you
don't have a target at all by pressing the escape key.
As an addendum
to this, close your inventory window before you hail them, as
this has been reported to be one issue with non-responsive NPCs.
If that doesn't work, close your eyes, stand on one foot, bay
at the moon and hit the ENTER key ... wait, sorry, that last
bit is the Bristlebane in me. Try the non-targeted talk and
the inventory closed if you're having problems with an NPC,
and, as always, remember to research in advance to verify that
you have the proper faction, proper text, etc.
Administrivia:
we're working on collecting all the information needed to have
a comprehensive tradeskill database that will allow cross-referencing
of trade supplies, sources (vendors, mob drops, etc.) and recipes.
It's a huge undertaking, and it's going to take a lot of time
to get it ready for public viewing. If you see requests in one
of the forums asking for help collecting data, that's why, and
the information we need the most is on the exotic stuff - tradeskill
drops off mobs, player-made cultural items that are then used
as ingredients for other recipes (i.e., adamantite chain jointing,
and other such things) and so on. So, as you're tradeskilling
and shopping, the data that you get from a right-click is likely
exactly what we're looking for. Keep an eye on the various forums
for a request for your tradeskill(s). Meanwhile, this half-blind
hobbit is toddling off tomorrow for lasik eye surgery,and is
supposed to be MIA from the boards and other eye-strain until
sometime Wednesday (patch day). Wish me luck!
June
6, 2002
I have
several things to highlight today:
The new
smithing recipes and trivials are slowly trickling in, and
I have some requests to make, based on the first day's worth
of data. Please be sure that when you're reporting on stats
for new items, that you're including race/class/weight information.
I know it takes a few extra moments to scribble it all down,
but it really makes a difference on the completeness of information
for the site. Please make sure you're clearly stating trivials
- there's a difference between "trivial 222" and
"trivial <=222". Make sure you're being fully
clear if you know the exact trivial vs. it being trivial
at that point or some point below. Please be sure that when
you're reporting new trivials on old cultural items that you
are explicitly stating whether you're working in racial chain
or plate for things like dark elven and high elven armors.
It may seem like a little thing, but when we're already dealing
with normal, enchanted, and imbued/enchanted armor, I refuse
to "assume" that I know which set you're talking
about.
That
having been said, there is a lot of data already on the appropriate
smithing pages. If you find a smithing page that does not
include two trivial colums (old & new), then I have not
yet processed any new information for that specific group
of items. This may mean that nobody has submitted any new
information, or it may just mean that I've not reached that
part of the huge pile of updates that have been dropped in
my lap.
Yes,
I'm aware that pretty much every smithing guide in the Learn
Smithing section is now totally outdated. This situation isn't
likely to change until new trivials are more fully nailed
down and folks start submitting new guides based on that information.
I've
managed to verifiy race changes to halfling cultural tailored
armor, but folks are slow in reporting in whether other
of the new cultural items that were added on May 5 have had
stats changed based on yesterday's patch. Wood elves, especially,
please check all those lovely tailored armors of yours, and
report in if anything has changed with your armor. (I'm hoping
half elf was added to the sets.)
Contrary
to yesterday's patch message, enchanted clay is still not
stacking. Whoops!
More
updates have been done to the PoTC
quest writeup, including the addition of the non-tradeskill
spell-only version of the quest. It still needs a lot of fleshing
out, but that's going to take more time than I currently have.
The mailbox
to which all my private EZBoard messages are sent is beyond
overflowing with viruses, trojan horses, spam, unwanted trash
as well as various stray emails from folks who need my attention.
I'm afraid to say that I'm beyond behind responding to any
real mail that might be lurking in that mailbox, and it's
not likely to change any time in the near future. In some
cases, I cannot respond as the people in question have
not included any email address in their message (EZBoards
doesn't include your email addy on private messages). Additionally,
I'm having problems with my ISP that I use for the rest
of my email, and it's been timing out left, right, sideways
and diagonally for the last several days. For the dozen or
so of you offering to take over the fashion section, however,
I'm going to close down that section of the site. Due to a
horde of problems, as well as system load, it's not feasible
for this site to track every single new/old set of player-made
armor and track two versions of the graphics for them (with
and without Luclin models).
Folks
have started emailing moderators when they have problems registering
an EZBoard account. Unfortunately, we don't own EZBoards,
so it's rather hard for us to troubleshoot these. You'll want
to report such problems in directly to the EZBoard Login/Support
Forum and see if they can help. (You don't need to be
registered/logged in to post to that forum.)
I've
developed zero tolerance for certain antics on the message
boards. Please remember that the Primal Scream Forum, as is
mentioned on the banner text when you enter that forum does
not allow personal attacks (name-calling, slander,
etc.), and yes, saying "I hope you @#$^'ing die"
is WELL beyond acceptable behavior and is subject to immediate
banning. We also ask, rather clearly, that you "keep
it clean". Unmasked swearing in subject lines, as well
as swearing (however masked) at specific people are
also not acceptable. For those that are unaware of the history
of that forum, it was originally meant as a spot where people
could rant and rave out their tradeskill frustrations after
a horrible run of luck, etc., while still keeping it within
the realms of polite public behavior. While we've allowed
some leeway on what's allowed in there, it is still not a
place to come in and spew filth. There are plenty of other
message boards in the world where you can spew that trash
if you really need to, but we don't need it in our
community.
June
5, 2002 - Patch Day!
It's another
BIG day with regards to tradeskills, and it will be a while
before updates hit the site and the dust settles. I'll make
another update later today, once we have some solid information
in place, but a few things to note in the meantime.
- The
initial writeup for the Protection
of the Cabbage quest is up on the site, including the
new earring reward. Nondruids who had been working on this
quest should pay special note to the fact that the previous
all/all earring is now druid-only.
- Many
new smithing recipes were put in today, as well as many new
trivials. It WILL be mid-afternoon before even the first of
these gets onto the site. It's even more important than ever
that you READ before you post your questions and comments
in the message boards, as we're going to be running a tight
herd on the chaos caused by stampeding smiths. There are specific
sticky topics set aside JUST for recipes and stats, and other
threads set aside for questions.
- Other
quests, item stats, etc. have changed, and we'll get those
updates on the site as able.
- Rennet
vendors are back in place.
- Remember
to watch your manners when posting on the message boards.
A LOT of folks have been less-than-mannered lately, and have
found themselves in the doghouse. The posting and conduct
rules are there for a reason, and we are very actively enforcing
them. This goes especially for those of you wanting to let
off some steam. Even in the Primal Scream Forum, remember
that the rules apply. Keep it family-rated, and remember NO
personal attacks. We understand that when tradeskills change,
folks tend to get a tad ... excited ... but this message board
community really does NOT appreciate some of the foaming at
the mouth we've seen lately. Such antics only distract us
from making sure that data gets accurately reported, then
recorded, onto the site.
June 5, Addendum 1:
The following is a
post from Rich Waters, one of the Lead Designers for EQ:
If you are not a Druid and you've completed the
PoTC quest, go and speak with Rebecca Cabbageleaf in Fungusgrove
- She's more than happy to give you something you'll be able
to use instead of Xanthe's Earring.
If you're one of the few people who did the quest twice and
lost an earring due to it being made lore, petition in game
and a GM will reimburse you with the nine ingredients needed
to make another earring after verifying your loss.
If your Xanthe's Earring is out of charges, trade it in with
Rebecca Cabbageleaf in Fungusgrove, and she'll give you one
that has charges. When items that didn't have an effect are
retroactively changed, it sometimes causes the "out of
charges" bug.
To trade the earring in with Rebecca, give her your Xanthe's
Earring and she'll give you an alternate kind of earring.
Give her back the alternate earring, and she'll give you a
fully charged Xanthe's earring back.
Sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you, this should
solve any difficulties anyone's had with the earring.
Thanks,
- Rich
May
18, 2002
Just a
quick note to let folks know that I've changed links around
since the last front page update. The main May 8 recipes page
can still be found in the
same spot, but ALL cultural recipes have been moved to their
permanent
links off the cultural recipes page. In another week or
so, I hope to split out the May 8 recipes onto thier permanent
recipes pages. I'll also be redoing FAQs and trade supplies
listings as time permits.
May
12, 2002 - Happy Mother's Day!
In a very
hobbit sort of way (giving gifts on a special day instead of
receiving them) this tired mother (of this community, plus 3
cats ;D) has a plethora of gifts for you all. Recipes, recipes
everywhere! Yes, it's chaos everywhere, with tradesfolk running
around, comparing notes, wanting to exchange their gifts for
other gifts, and so on. It's going to take quite a while for
things to settle down around here and for "DenMom"
to clean up everything. In the meantime, you'll want to watch
the message boards (as always), as well as bookmark the following:
Main collection of May 8
recipes, wood
elven cultural, other
cultural. Yes, I really do mean to move each of the cultures
to their own page for easier sorting out, and then later merge
them with their other cultural recipes, but I keep getting sidetracked
by new recipe updates. It'll get there.
I've been
agonizing for over a day now what to mention in a front page
update, as so much of it is newsworthy to varying parts of the
tradeskill community, and I know, no matter what I highlight,
someone will feel left out. Some posts late last night/early
this morning decided me on what would be highlighted ...
Druids
and tradeskillers from all across Norrath have been hard at
work, deciphering the Liber Brassica Felix books, in search
of the Protection of the Cabbage spell (a single-target PoTG).
It's been a monumental undertaking, and I'd like to thank the
EQTC community and the folks over at the Druid Grove for sharing
information and ideas enough to get this sorted out quickly.
The quest has been gargantuan, to say the least. And it's now
over. The lovely Lady Xanthe Ravenwolf of Bertoxx exhaustedly
reported in last night that she had completed the quest, and
was kind enough to provide us with information on the reward
(the spell and a nice earring), and a run-down of the quest.
(I'll be working on webbing it after the caffeine kicks in.)
We then received a visit from Rich Waters, one of the Lead Designers
from EQ (I swear, he's got to be getting as little sleep as
I am right now, from the looks of his posts on the boards!)
Rich said
Congratulations, Xanthe!
With the first completion of this quest, a new spell was
brought into the world, and I'd like to thank the many druids
and tradesfolk who participated in this event.
This quest is unusual in EverQuest, as it was intended to
be done once and then change after it was solved. In the next
patch, Xanthe will reap the rewards of finishing the quest
first, and all druids will find the scroll much easier to
attain now that the quest has been completed.
The quest will stay in game, for people who enjoy tradeskills
and anyone who completes the full quest will find the final
reward is quite suitable for the effort.
Thanks for playing,
Rich Waters
Lead Designer, EverQuest
In other words, folks, if you wait until the next patch, the
spell will be easier to obtain. The quest will stay in
game for those of us who enjoy playing with such stuff {curls
protectively around her fishing pole and her Misty Thicket Picnic},
but for those who don't have a tradeskill junkie's patience
with such quests, find enough patience to wait for the next
patch. ;D
I'm back to practicing my dual-wielding skills - foraging for
tufts of dire wolf fur on one machine while tackling site updates
on the other ... have fun with all the new recipes, everyone!
~DenMom
May
8 , 2002 - The Patch Message
I won't
repeat the entire patch message, but here are the parts that
are relevant to tradeskills, along with some commentary:
- Added over 1,000 new tradeskill
recipes for all levels of skill, along with many
recipe books. A few of the vendors of Norrath might be able
to get you started on your way (of course, we'll be scrambling
here to get the information online for all of you, but expect
things to be a tad ... hectic ... for a while)
- Added Mortar and Pestle to a Thurgadin merchant (this
should make poisonmaking, dyemaking, pottery idols, and a
few other things a bit easier for those who have chosen to
live mostly in Velious)
- Rubbing Alcohol is now available from a vendor in Thurgadin
(happy shawl questing! No more running to Cabilis!)
- Hit point bonuses on food items should be working (centi
steaks and centi toe stew, anyone?)
- Characters can no longer scribe a scroll that they can't
cast due to deity restrictions (imbue gem spells were bugged
for a while so anyone of the proper level/class could scribe
them, now you should be able to only scribe the spell for
your deity)
Your best bet for the first 24 hours is to keep an eye on the
message boards for the new recipes. It's going to take some
time to get these things webbed, especially with the server
lag I'm already seeing this morning from eager folks at w*rk
hitting the site, trying to see if anything's been found yet.
Addendum -
Erm, um ... if you tried to access the message boards earlier,
and were timing out all over the place, you weren't alone. I
feel sort of bad for the folks at EZBoard when they saw the
load hit today. We've now been moved to a server of our very
own (I'll be sending them a very heartfelt thank you to them
for their fast work). The reroute to the new message board server
is automagic, but please DO change your bookmarks when you have
a chance, to cut down on their load.. It will take me days before
I can change all the links on all the pages other than the front
page, as the recipes that everyone's trying to get information
on are the priority right now. New
message board link
It's going to take a while to get recipes into their proper
places, and stuff tested out. There's a temporary
recipe page found here, and as things there get verified,
tested, etc., I'll get them onto the normal recipe pages as
well.
~DenMom
