Game Update 39

I’ll admit it, this one snuck up on me. I wasn’t expecting it until next week for some reason. Anywho, this is the last Game Update until Rise of Kunark comes out (short of the annual Halloween update, but that isn’t considered part of the Game Update cycle).

So what was all in the update? Let’s see what the patch notes say…

HIGHLIGHTS

• The Fear Gate in the Feerrott has opened! The Shard of Fear, a fraction of the Plane of Fear, is now accessible by Norrathian mortals. Only seasoned adventurers traveling in groups should dare look upon this realm of terror and dread.
• Further sighting of mysterious visitors from Kunark have occurred in the waters near Freeport and Qeynos. See Admiral Marc Grenich in Qeynos Harbor and Livia Montellus in Freeport East to join in the investigations of these visitors.
• Guild banks have been extended with several new options. See the Guild Banks section below for details.

The new Shard of Fear has been anticipated since Fan Faire. I don’t know the difficulty, but I imagine it will be at least as hard as Unrest was, or Castle Mistmoore. More Kunark lore is good, I’m looking forward to the final chapter of the pre-expansion quest line, to see what they have in store for us. And Guild Bank options? We shall see…

GAMEPLAY

• “The Tablets of the Blademaster” quest no longer requires that the player be in the Pillars of Flame zone to examine the spirit vessel.
• The Valley of the Magi instance off of the Commonlands should be functioning properly again.
• The Misty Mustang whistles should now summon pinto looking Misty Mustangs instead of Elddarian Chargers.
• The quest “A Portrait of Destiny ” can no longer be shared.
• Vhalen’s Tools can now be examined outside of the Acadechism for a quest update.
• Server Performance Improvements for dungeons and raid encounters.
• Usable Items that are not usable from inventory will always show darkened out while not equipped.

I heard people complaining about the Misty Mustang horses looking like Elddarian Chargers, good to see they reverted back to their old appearance. Vhalen’s Tools fix is good for those working on Swords of Destiny. Better server improvements is always good. And of course the usable items change will make it easier to see at a glance what you can use.

PETS

• Deity pets can now be used along with collection pets.
• Pets with random names will now persist that name through zoning.

Can never have enough fluff pets. Or pets in general. Though I don’t know why anyone would care about random named pets, since you’ve been able to name your pet for a very long time.

TRADESKILLS

• Provisioners now have a recipe for prickly pear pie, and no longer have two different recipes for prickly pear cookies.
• Carpenters, inspired by the Night of the Dead, have begun researching new and sinister furniture items. A limited selection is now available with more development expected to yield further results in the future!
• Harvested items will now display the level of recipes they are used in.

New recipes are always good. And the UI indicator for harvested items is a nice touch. Not only will it help us veterans remember what is for what, but it will help new players as well.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Mystic
  • Weapon Mastery should now improve the dps, max health, attributes and crushing skill of the shaman pet.
• Fury
  • Pact of Nature will scribe the spell for the player even if their inventory is full

Poor Shaman, always getting the short end of the stick with their pets. At least now their pets should be at least somewhat useful.

SPELLS

• Clarified the Slaughter spell scrolls to be Assassin: Slaughter and Berserker: Slaughter to reduce confusion
• Instant cast non proc spells will now get a small bonus from +spell/heal/combat art mods
• Spells that summon multiple limited pets will display that information more concisely in the tooltip.

Inquisitor

• Contempt now uses ordination like the other spells in the line do.

Nice to see that the two Slaughter spells got distinguished. There’s still a few that need tweaking, but otherwise it isn’t too bad.

HOUSING

• The obsolete option to “Relinquish” homes has been removed. It’s no longer required since of the advent of automatic moving crates. To move your belongings, simply go to your new home and buy it. Your items will be moved into the new home automatically.

So true, the Relinquish option is definitely obsolete now. There’s literally no reason to get rid of a house anymore.

GUILD BANKS

Guild banks have been extended with several new options:

• Each guild bank tab can have its own name.
• There is a space on each guild bank tab for a comment.
• Each guild bank tab can now be set so withdrawing any quantity from a stack is considered as withdrawing one item for the purposes of the withdrawal limit.

Excellent changes, these were much needed. Nothing quite as annoying as your guild leader setting a withdraw limit of one item, and you meeting that quota on a single root. Of course, withdraw limits tend to be annoying anyway, but I digress.

BROKER:

• Two-handed weapons will no longer be returned in broker searches for “Primary” slot weapons.

UI

• When you run out of a charged item (* totem) the tooltip will no longer say “Charges: 5 / 5″ it will instead say “Charges:0/5″ to reduce confusion.
• There is a new UI window that will show only debuffs on your character:
• The UI window is called MainHUD.DetrimentalEffects
• The old effects window will now only show beneficial effects

I had a chance to play around with the new UI window. I’m not really sure it’s any better or worse than we had before, though it does help organize better.

All in all, a good patch. Hopefully Shard of Fear will keep us busy until the expansion rolls around; there’s only so many more Unrest runs we’ll be able to squeeze out until then.