Good changes!

This is a fair ask, though having just gone through T10, I got most of my hammer pieces from zone pulling in BB using the GC.  Perhaps just leaving it available in that zone or increasing the chances of hammer parts to drop in there, could be a balance adjustment when the GC nerf hits?

Characters: I have 24, but due to the scaling and my current gear, I'm using 18 that have the highest DPS.  War, 4 Pal, 3 Mnk, 2 Rog, Sk, Wiz, Mage, Rng, 2 Brd, Cleric and Zerk.  Benched chanter/war/druid/bst/necro and one other i forgot.
Equipment: Tank is VP geared fully, halloween augs, but no War token items.  Healers have Ucv4 on 2 pallies and a cleric, 1 Ucv3 pally and 1 Uc pally.  DPS is a mix of maybe 6 or so UW and 6 or so rank 50 earrings
Combat Efficiency: Several minutes per mob.
Time Investment: 30ish hours
Quest Progression: Just starting
Loot Accumulation: 0 (but for the time investment and mob kill speed, this is expected)
Favorite Features: It's fantastic.  The quests, the gambling, the boss spawn chances, it's all fantastic.
Areas for Improvement: I'd like to solely comment on the DPS aspect of this zone and to at least some extent, Tunare/VP.  The tank/healing for these zones progression wise feels fine.  The DPS seems to have taken a massive requirement spike after T10.  This likely feels very natural for the old guard players who have already finished putting rank 50 earrings on every toon, gathered a UW for each toon and other items.  Though I can see at least some of them are still struggling with the time investment in the zone.  I wanted to suggest perhaps following the previous formula of adding "budget items" at certain points in the game.  Sleepers/Halloween weapons are a good example.  They aren't meant to be replacements for the UW, and those items should be top tier, but could we do the same thing with DPS oriented items.  Take the earring for example.  Rank 50 is 200%.  What if you added a mod to existing jewerly that drops in tier zones that adds 10% per tier and having it end up at something around 100% in T10 and not have it stack with the existing earring.  Such and item would be worthless to well geared old guard players, but would give new players a progression path into these well made new zones, without having spent the 8+ years grinding GSOA.  It could be any number of solutions, or none at all, but just my feedback.  Lastly, loving the new content and seeing Sarthin/Draca talk about already working on multiple new zones is absolutely spectacular so please don't take this as a negative thing.  All this new stuff is an absolute positive.

Another thing to consider is without GC zone pulls, certain items like GSOA/GSS are going to be harder to come by for players that aren't already in kael.

But that can also be balanced.

GSS's are available in VP in far greater quantity than SR
GSOA's won't have any changes to their drop rates, as everything below SR can be ZP'd by any T10 warrior, with out without GC

How about letting players use Double/Triple in Veeshan?

Another thing to consider is without GC zone pulls, certain items like GSOA/GSS are going to be harder to come by for players that aren't already in kael.

But that can also be balanced.

Sounds like good changes.  With regards to the GC change (long time coming), could we have a look at T10 length adjustment to balance it against a GC nerf?

Because people have been abusing (not in an 'against the rules' way) the Guardian Charm's overpowered effects for so long, I do intend to make a few changes, though it's not going to be extreme:

• Increase base faction rewards from kill quests, likely from 75 to 100.
• Reduce Plagueborne kill count, likely from 1000 to 800.
• Introduce a new item 'Sunderock Spear' - this item will be the result of a Magic Box combine of 5 Scorpion's Spears, and will be an area pull item with a short duration root (usable in Sunderock only). This will allow players to more easily pull camps in Sunderock, and not lose too much to the inability to zone pull (without GC).

Zone pull will still work in Sunderock, and it is certainly survivable with the right gear, but most people rely on GC to faceroll ZP it.

For clarity, GC will be useless by level 78. Level 77 it will be very ineffective, with 76 and 75 being slightly better. Ultimately, Guardian Charms are a cheat code, and they were never intended to be.

This all sounds like a great trade off.  Do you think the weapon quest count should come down as well to sync up with your balance changes?

There is a solution I am kicking around, that eliminates the economy busting rate of essence drops, but still gives some relief to people who really do need to come into T11 pretty well equipped. This solution is that VP will drop No Drop, all in one essences, that can be turned into the Essence Trader, and will give credit towards the 100 essence quests. While these won't drop as frequently as essences were, their utility will be far superior. I want to think on this for a few days though, and make sure it's not something else that could cause issues down the road.


-Draca

That is a fantastic idea.  To add onto that, would you consider making each essence type drop from any mob rather than those in the front dropping different types than those in the back?  Most people are going to want to attempt to clear near bosses or kill specific mobs to spawn bosses.  Having those able to drop each of your new "essence bundle" item, would be a nice change of pace.

Sounds like good changes.  With regards to the GC change (long time coming), could we have a look at T10 length adjustment to balance it against a GC nerf?

UCv4's. GSOA.  Budget Earring of Ages. GoW's/GoW Item Drops.

If credit reward donations aren't coming back, EZ credits or EZ credit items would be nice.  

Did you equip any gear, such as a weapon, that might have a level requirement above your own?

And the standard fare of "Is your spellfile and zonefiles updated from EZ Server Files", on the left side of this forum?

People should be able to control themselves by not clicking on a wiki to avoid spoilers, but sometimes shiny thing so maybe a "general direction" spoiler free initial section.

"Go here, talk to these NPC to pick up task 1/2/3/4/5."

Sign me up, but weekends between Thanksgiving/Christmas are tough.   

This looks to be related to login server setup for host files:

Login Server update Oct-29-21
EZ Server has migrated away from the EQEmulator loginserver, as there were persistent issues with it's reliability. This means that you won't find EZ Server on the old EQEmu loginserver, or at least not reliably.
Change your eqhost.txt to login.projecteq.net and use your EQEmu account per normal. eqhost.txt is found in your root Everquest folder, and should be changed to the following:
[LoginServer]
#Host=login.eqemulator.net:5999
Host=login.projecteq.net:5999
This should prove to be much more reliable in general.

I have the same issue if I use the suggested login.projecteq.net, but it seems to work with login.eqemulator.net.  Perhaps that is something Akk/Draca can investigate as time permits.

Would it be possible to consider slightly increasing the boss chain spawn rate?  A few people in my guild, are going through this event for the first time.  It's exciting, rewards are great, but the boss chains really feel a bit lacking.  Most of them are likely going to go through this event without having obtained enough key stones for a single final boss (despite having the gear to easily pull the entire zone and plenty of rest time between repop).  It's fine if not, just putting that out there.  Or looking at alternative methods of increasing keystone access without enabling ZP.

Server down.  Must be prepping Quad loot.