Shattered Kingdoms

Dulrik is alright with me giving you all a few details on this, so here goes.

The best armor in the game is hard to get. There's no other way to put that. I think it is feasible, but it would require veterans to lead a group to and through the dangerous areas, which could take several hours and encompass significant risk. Not everyone is interested in that, and that's understandable. In specific terms, all of the items in the Iron Citadel were improved and updated. Old scripts were altered, new scripts were added, and all of the bonuses were reworked to be relevant in today's game. And, just to be clear, the Grand General is wearing mostly heavy armor now. The Dreamscape and Nightmares Temple did not need as much work, because they were not as outdated, but a bug that was causing the items forged by the Dreamsmith to crumble was fixed. Those should rank as being among the best jewelry slot items available, for whatever that is worth.

The Infernal Dominion was expanded and has new equipment, but also new challenges. It is not as easy to get to the Iron Citadel as it used to be, but the rewards in the Iron Citadel and in the Infernal Dominion are bigger than ever before. It is going to be like Christmas morning for the first group who manages to pull off cleaning out those zones, if and when that ever happens. I think people are going to like some of the new scripts. They are not overly powerful, but they are novel and useful. You get more return on your investment than just outfitting one person in godlike armor. You can get a couple of suits of godlike armor and then something extra for everyone else.

So, that's the story with the top-tier equipment. The second-tier stuff is more relevant for day-to-day play. Raids on the Iron Citadel and Nightmares Temple are going to be infrequent, if they ever happen, and the equipment in those places is going to remain top-notch. However, there is a lot of good stuff in the Wastelands and the Outer Planes, and other areas that are moderately challenging, but nowhere near as challenging as the Nightmares Temple or Iron Citadel. A bunch of it was reworked. Karnak's equipment was the poster-child for outdated equipment for a long time. It now has innate bonuses and a script that make it (or pieces of it) viable to use as part of a good suit. Other second-tier equipment has gotten the same treatment. The bulk of it is in the Wastelands, but it is also in other areas. Most of it just sits there, unused. A competent group can acquire most of it in under an hour. It is where you would expect it to be - Matron Houses, Outer Planes, D'Astae Camp, Mountain Fortress, Craeftilin, Cain Techt, Pits of Az'Pook, Lower Morea, Vaerlain, Necropolis, Selhys, and so on. A handful of top-tier loot is interspersed among these areas, particularly in the most dangerous sub-areas, but the best stuff by far in quantity and quality is where you would expect it.

I feel that the Teron dragon quest is worth doing again. There are items there that are useful for a range of classes, some of which reward people who have completed the quest with scripted functionality. It's not just outdated armor anymore. I believe people are aware of this since a few of the items have now made it into circulation. Depending on your build, this stuff could qualify as top-tier or second-tier. Thus far, the feedback about these items has been positive.



This already exists. There is a lot of second-tier equipment that is unclaimed, some of which has the kinds of bonuses you are asking for. There are also two new zones waiting to be discovered. Those zones are not as hard as the Iron Citadel or Nightmares Temple. They are supposed to be more along the lines of the Wastelands in overall difficulty. There is a decent amount of second- and top-tier equipment to be found in them. There is, however, no GRP associated with these zones. People will find them at some point if they look hard enough... or they won't. In addition to these various stores of equipment, the sacred suits are also more useful across the board than they used to be. Elements of those, or the full suits, can be incorporated into putting together a good set of equipment.

To make a truly awesome suit, you either have to go beat up the bosses in the toughest zones (or use some other method to acquire their stuff), or you have to figure out the landscape of the second-tier and isolated top-tier equipment well enough to assemble something from among those items. That, or you can get a viable, but not perfect, suit from a hodgepodge of first-, second-, and third-tier items. You don't have to have the best suit in the world to compete in PvP, but you do have to have something decent, and that means taking some time to learn what is out there and how to get it. The wide availability of bless spells from quest sources should also help in that department. This is one area where veterans enjoy an advantage - they know how to assemble a good suit from what is available to them and what they can logistically hope to obtain - and the only way to catch up to the top veterans in this department is to go out and learn all the stuff they learned.

Whatever you do, take a bard. There is a lot of new lore, both on old equipment that has new functionality, and new equipment. If you take some time to explore and see what is out there, I think you will like what you find.

Fair enough.

I know for a fact that constructive -- not positive -- feedback was provided about some of those items, because I was part of the process.

Are you saying these concerns have been addressed very recently or that recent feedback hasn't been processed?

I don't have any particular firsthand, current experience with the areas mentioned here but this is a great example of a meaningful and informative--without being too revealing--staff response. GJ.

Takes a group of vets to lead, several hours to navigate, and you obtain a uncommon suit to kit out one player against something as common and easy to roll as a 14 art sorc

Even then there is no such thing as 100% protection

I feel as if there is a slight imbalance here when more challenging endgame content translates to trying not to get ownd by 1 shot spells

It is not going to happen, unless there is a sudden and significant resurgence in the player count. After accounting for racial enmity, alignment conflicts, faction conflicts, religious conflicts, and personal conflicts the who list cannot even come close to supporting the zones in the game. It is like attempting to raid on a low population WoW server before cross realm and flexible raid groups.

The last time the game had enough players to complete "hard" content was the summer/fall of 2014 and spring of 2013 before that (thanks Grep).

Thanks for the reply Thuban, I hope we (the players) can get there and explore these areas soon.

Thuban's post is awesome, and I really appreciate it, but there's still a huge gaping flaw in the current implementation, which is what the playerbase overall seems upset over.

You can target enchants, but you can't specialize in a specific save.

I wrote out my ideas for an implementation of allowing targeted saves a long time ago, and one of the big lynchpins of the entire process was that I wanted to make it achievable for even a "casual player" to obtain a suit with one save if he targeted it, while making it only slightly (if any) easier to have a suit with two saves, and just as ridiculous with regard to obtaining a suit with all three saves. This new enchant system, combined with the new EQ overhaul, now -mandates- difficult PvE trips and requires -more- player interaction in order to be able to get a suit with anywhere over +12 in a single save.

What's the end result? You have two options. You can build a character that's going to need to explore, going to rely on other people being logged on when he is, and going to spend time enchanting in order to have a suit that's got even a moderate chance of succeeding against petrification (And even that is going to have diminishing returns in PvP, because it only takes -one- petrification to kill you).

Or, you could just roll an MR barb or roll a sorc and experience nothing but great benefits from this recent change.

Making saves targetable while also preventing them from being able to stack on jewelry and armor didn't fix why enchanting was awful: It just shifted the meta, resulting in completely overpowered sorcerers who can win fights because people can't stack fort anymore without an extensive PvE trip.

TL;DR: It's now much harder to specialize in a single save, but spells which instantly win fights when you are lacking in a single save haven't been touched (aside from the across the board impairment nerfs). Has anyone put any thought towards nerfing some of the instant-win spells against PCs? I'm specifically looking at petrification, sleep, and dispel magic.

If you don't nerf the I-win spells, then you're -always- going to have a disparity in the required amount of work to be "PvP viable" for MR classes versus non-MR classes. If you do want to go the route of nerfing the instant I-win spells so that non-MR classes aren't required to spend hours with multiple people just to make it slightly less likely that they'll instantly lose to petrification/sleep/dispel, then here's my advice.

Petrification: This spell should function differently on PCs than it does on NPCs. Against PCs, petrification should implement a stacking debuff which applies the same (or similar) effects as slow, and only on three stacks should it actually petrify the target.

Sleep: On PCs (Or maybe across the board), this spell should allow the victim a new saving throw at least every combat round on the fast affects system. If they save the throw, they should wake up. For held spells this should relate to the level/art of the caster, but on items like staves, the DC of the throw should be related to the level of the item with no art.

Dispel Magic: This spell should be capped on the number of spells it will remove at any time. I think that either there should be a hard cap of 2-3 spells dispelled at maximum, and/or there should be a single will save for the dispel cast, and then separate will saves for every single spell dispelled only if the first will save fails.



People might say "you're just nerfing sorcerers," to which I'll reply "Only the parts with no counterplay." Sorcs are fine with the enchant changes, and it's about time that the highest utility class in the game came with some drawbacks in PvP viability. Right now, the best tactic in the game is to recite/cast petrification, then recall if it fails. That's not because people playing sorcerers are being jerks, it's because the game is currently coded to reward that behavior.

Just allow enhancements to stack and fix mr. You can only add five, six if your lucky to any thing, at best if you fill every slot with an enhancement you get 8 sine you can't drop it on jewellery or weapons, 9 if you toss out your container, so at best that is an added 45. Takes bottom ring gear to second tier, takes second tier to first, makes first tier with getting because you will stomp people. I am missing the part where stacking us bad. It's not going to make me invincible, but it may let me eat one our treo spells and be able to do something.

Mr is stupid easy and stupid powerful, easy change to make it bit so bad is to lower the threshold for what mgr eliminates when it is put on. Fewer people will be able to buff up their on their mr and be untouchable while they one shot you. If Mr is strong enough to stop multiple spells from landing it should be strong enough to negate magic on the wearer.