Recent Updates & Upcoming Content

Draca

Administrator
Sr. Member

Posts: 463

Recent Updates & Upcoming Content

« on: January 03, 2025, 06:09:13 pm »

Upcoming Content:

Both Sarthin and I are in the middle of new Tier content, Tiers 12 & 13 respectively. We have been tied up pretty heavily with real life commitments, though progress continues to be made. I have been working on the hard mode system, which will allow players to select for themselves whether they want an easier experience, with appropriately inferior items, or if they want to challenge themselves and get the upgraded versions of items. This system may not be used in every Tier going forward, but once it is operational, designing content to use it is not much more time intensive than normal, and should decrease the barrier to entry into new tiers.. Should you decide to work through part of the zone in easy mode, there is nothing to stop you from switching to hard mode and getting the upgraded pieces, it just allows more access to smaller groups, or less efficient players who may not enjoy the struggle of difficult content. Neither of us have a set date in mind, though my Tier (tentatively Tier 12), Vex Thal is making use of the NPC's previously in place, and once hard mode is fully functional, should move fairly quickly.

Recent Changes:

Since not everyone follows the changelog, or the server Discord, here's a list of some recent changes (not sure when I did this last, so might be some overlap).

[September 22nd 2024] [Draca] [Spells] Entire line of Incisor of the Unholy has been changed, as well as specific changes to it's use in ToFS.
This spell was never well tuned for the level of player it was used against, and it's duration was absurd.

[October 18th 2024] [Draca] [Misty Thicket] Misty Thicket's spawn rate for loot bosses has been increased 25&PCT;
[October 18th 2024] [Draca] [Misty Thicket] Zangorath will now drop more randomized loot, and less SMR's
Misty is, and was designed to be a fairly limited use zone. It should be fairly equivalent in time to the traditional camps for the Guild quests, so some changes were made to that end.

[October 18th 2024] [Draca] [Wings of the Angel] Buffs provided by Wings of the Angel will now be more in line with the level of the recipient of the buffs.
Wings of the Angel is an overpowered spell that I would prefer to remove outright, but instead of that, or the previous idea of charging people who cast it on low level players, it was made
to simply provide level appropriate buffs to 4 different level ranges.

[October 27th 2024] [Draca] [Airplane] An NPC now has the rare chance to spawn on boss deaths. RNGesus will always have an item that a player in the zone needs.
[November 3rd 2024] [Draca] [Airplane] RNG**** has been renamed to Nick_Saban (Roll Tide), as well as had it's spawn chance reduced.
[November 3rd 2024] [Sarthin] [Halls of Honor] T3 bosses from Airplane has a chance to spawn when killing NPCs in Halls of Honor.
It was well noted how bad RNG could be during the Airplane boss summoning for Tier's 3 & 4 armor loot, so we made a few quality of life changes to help offset any really bad RNG.

[October 27th 2024] [Draca] [Class Augments] Epic Vendor will now replace lost class augments. This bases the replacement solely on level, so in some cases you may receive a class augment 1 level behind what you had....it's better than nothing.

[November 12th 2024] [Draca] [Pets] Corrected issue where pets would not automatically re-arm themselves after zoning.
This may remain an issue, any reports on this would be great.

[November 12th 2024] [Draca] [Level Up Wench] Corected grammer issue.

[December 2nd 2024] [Draca] [Hills of Shade AA's] Keeper of the Ages will now accept Hills of Shade 20k and 50k AA gems (one at a time).

[December 13th 2024] [Draca] [Items] Some items now stack beyond 1000. Essences and Zone Pulls have been increased to 30000 stack size.
Server code was updated to allow stacking beyond our previous cap of 1000, so items were made to stack higher.
[December 13th 2024] [Draca] [Items] Powerless Ring of the Ages is no longer lore.

[December 16th 2024] [Draca] [Spells] Some spell combines have been corrected
[December 16th 2024] [Chieftan] [Wiki] Items - all tier armor, both molds and completed items have been added to the Wiki.
[December 16th 2024] [Chieftan] [Wiki] Spells - all spell recipes have been gone through and corrected in the Wiki.
These were all primarily the work of Chieftan, who spent many hours going through screenshots, cropping, adding to Wiki and giving me corrections where needed.

[December 27th 2024] [Draca] [Instances] '/say current instance' or selecting 'Current Instance Information' from the Instance menu will provide some useful information on your current instance.
This was added to give people information on which instance they are in, to make it easier to move characters to where loot is etc.

[December 28th 2024] [Draca] [Items] Several high value 'plat bag' type items have had their sellable value replaced by a right click effect that directly adds the platinum to your character. There is a new spell file for this, however it will add the platinum regardless.
Following stacking changes, I increased the stack size of a lot of items, including platinum bags and other sellable loot items. However, it was possible to dupe platinum from vendors due to an issue during selling and buying stacks of these items, so I just made them right-clickable expendable items, and it directly adds the platinum to your inventory.

[December 29th 2024] [Draca] [Old Commons] Slightly reduced the required kills for the hill giant to spawn. This should prevent NPC's that die to other NPC's from preventing the hill giant from spawning in a full zone clear.
This is very minor, almost not noticeable, but should help players who find themselves with an empty zone, but no hill giant.

[January 3rd 2025] [Draca] [Pets] Pets can now be renamed through the #renamepet <petnamehere> command. This persists through zoning, and re-summoning. Use #renamepet clear to revert to automatic pet naming. Abusive names will result in suspensions.
This is just for fun. Someone had asked if they could rename pets, which I thought was possible, but turns out is a GM command. So I did some quick work to allow players to rename their pets.

Thank you to everyone for a great 2024! Personal thanks to Sarthin who put out a big blast of content earlier in the year, with both Kael Drakkel and Fear Itself being awesome additions to EZ's content. As some people are aware, my Mom has been waiting for almost a year for a lung transplant. In order to be closer to the hospital, she has been living 2 hours away, and required help getting both her, and my Dad to appointments around LA, which between normal day-to-day things, and work, really chewed up my time this past year. I am happy to report though, that on December 28th, she received her long awaited transplant, and is doing well. Will still have some appointments, but will be much less time intensive, so work should begin to progress more steadily from my end.

To an awesome 2025, hope this finds everyone well after the holiday season.

For Akkadius, Sarthin and all those before us who made EZ Server what it is,
and the enthusiastic and passionate community of nerds we do this for...

Happy New Year

-Draca


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Acaelis

Newbie

Posts: 5

Re: Recent Updates & Upcoming Content

« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2025, 10:49:44 pm »

Great to hear your mom had a successful surgery! I will pray for a speedy recovery.

Thank you Sarth and Draca for all you do! Looking forward to a great 2025 for EZ and our friends and family here.


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Danish

Full Member

Posts: 121

Re: Recent Updates & Upcoming Content

« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2025, 04:48:38 pm »

Just a quick question - realistically to have fun, how many bots do you need to weild to have fun after T9? 6?-12?-18?

I see dudes dragging along trains of up to 24+ chars. Whats that about?


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Draca

Administrator
Sr. Member

Posts: 463

Re: Recent Updates & Upcoming Content

« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2025, 07:53:43 am »

Here is my take, because I was similarly interested in how new content was driving group sizes. Now, while I am a GM, and in my day I was a good player, I have not played EQ in any real capacity for almost 4 1/2 years. I did not use of the more recent combat assisting macros, I was button mashing like a WoW player, triggering heals, buffs and special melee abilities through standard social keys. There was no 'Is this buff up, if not, cast it' scripting, it was mostly triggering keypresses on other characters to do what I wanted them to do. I knew that up to Tier 9 wouldn't be a problem, so I started with a gear maxed T9 Warrior, and a mix geared group of support and DPS characters.

I was primarily interested in 6 and 12 man groups, and these my key takeaways: You have to take the time to maximize your gear, ideally using an optimized mix of classes that may, or may not be what you would like your group composition to be, and it will take longer than running a larger group (even when the loot needs of a larger group is considered). You also need to take the time to understand using MQ2. If you just throw your hands up because you don't want to learn how to get it to do what you're asking it too (within the rules), then you're on the wrong server. Boxing requires some degree of super basic MQ2 scripting, and EZ is a boxing server.

Tier 10 is doable without issue by a 6 man group, warriors still have the huge riposte and Guardian Charm benefit here, and since GSS drop rates are better than before, you can fairly quickly trade or loot the GSS's you need for UA once you're done the faction. 6 man was initially hit or miss on some fights, there is certainly the possibility that a mob, especially 2, can get the best of you, but I don't automatically equate the fact that you might die here and there with a group not being strong enough. I got through the initial faction, got my Orc armor in Tier 10 along with a couple accessories, and at that point, you could duo it with a warrior and paladin. I did add the 2nd group, and in Tier 10 it just increases the speed you can kill, and reduces your chances of death to pretty much zero.

Sleeper's Tomb is not only doable with 6, it's almost overkill. With a max geared warrior with GC and a reasonably gear Paladin, you can duo the entire zone with no issues. I actually duo'd the entirety of ST when it was first launched, because it requires 3 pieces of UA to enter, and I didn't have the GSS's to get anyone other than my Warrior and Paladin in, and I didn't even know that the Guardian Charm was so overpowered at that point. Again, 12 helps the speed.

Veeshan's Peak is difficult with 6, but can be done. It isn't easy, and even knowing what every NPC is going to do, as I developed the zone, getting past some of the gut checks, like the dragons, was a test of patience. In all honesty though, I did re-configure my 6 man group at this point to include a Druid, since I was able to fairly quickly craft the AE heal spell. 12 man made VP feel much more stable from a gameplay perspective, as the increased healing and DPS made fights feel much more controlled, and wipes were few and far between. I did struggle with Tunare initially, and she isn't terribly 6-man friendly, but certainly doable as a 12 man group.

Kael Drakkel/Fear Itself are difficult as a 6 man group, but also can feel a bit tedious due to kill speed without some additional DPS. 12 man improved it markedly, as the majority of the 2nd group was DPS. Bosses are incredibly challenging as a 6 man group in both of these zones, and in full disclosure, I had to cycle through a few iterations of class mix to find one that seemed the best fit for my playstyle in this zone.

My final conclusion was this: You can 6 man through all of EZ's content, but you will need more patience than most players have. You will have to make sure you maximize your gear, and may have to bring up and gear a new class as the class meta changes. Playing a 6 man group in the final few zones (VP, KD, Fear) is very close to the feeling of playing old EQ, without the breaks to meditate. Fights are prolonged and challenging, and wipes are always a possibility. 12 man group simply shortens the duration of the fight, and gives you an extra healer or two, which increases survivability greatly.

Ultimately, it depends if you can separate yourself from the thought that you have to try to race to 'finish' the game. If that's the mindset, than 6 or 12 man will disappoint, and you're looking at probably 24+ groups, but if you just want to be able to play through the content, and can handle the slower, though much more terrifying, pace, than 6 or 12 is fine. That all being said, I would personally run 12, because while I don't care to race to finish the game, my patience isn't exactly that of a Saint.


« Last Edit: January 05, 2025, 08:00:39 am by Draca »	Logged

gnonim

Jr. Member

Posts: 76

Re: Recent Updates & Upcoming Content

« Reply #4 on: Today at 08:54:35 am »

Great to hear your mom is doing well. Thanks for the updates and all of the hard work over the years. Much appreciated!


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