[Test] Update Notes: Tuesday, December 20, 2011(0)

[Offical Forums]

DUNGEON / PLAYER HOUSING RATINGS
The house and dungeon leaderboards have now been converted from the previous 5-star rating system to a new "Like" system.
When visiting a house or completing a dungeon maker zone you now have the option to "Like" the zone in either of the two categories.
The leaderboards are now based on the accumulation of likes.
Awards continue to work as before and are given to the players at the top of the leaderboard.


POPULATION / ZONE PROGRESSION
Tower of Tactics x4 raid [Challenge Mode], and Tallons’s Stronghold x4 Raid [Challenge Mode]
Several of the raid bosses have had effects in their raid wide debuff spells lowered.
Mystikus Terrorwing toxic elementals have lower health, and their venomous mist spell is now dispellable. Mystikus will not retaliate damage with lethal consequences until 3 secs after he ports to the center of the room, giving players time to cancel their spells etc. Ambassador Grindstone – geonid warrior adds have lower health. Players now have a warning regarding the bullseye target and a bit more time to remove it before the bull will charge.

Elements of War [Challenge]
Terrinon Bloodclaw has had his flurry chance removed. Health and damage has been slightly adjusted and adds should come a little less frequently.

Throne of Storms: Hall of Legends [Both Challenge and Normal]
Legatus Prime Mikill should wait longer before unleashing his Killing Blow if he is stationary.

The City of Freeport
There is now only a single patrolling wraithguard within the passage way of the Overlord’s Plaza. The static wraithguards that were blocking the entry way from North, East, West Freeport have been removed.


DUNGEON FINDER
Dungeon Finder should now include contested dungeons at all tiers starting at 20.


DUNGEON MAKER
You may now play through DM dungeons using your own characters. On the Dungeon Maker window, you will now see two options, ‘Play as Self’ and ‘Play as Avatar’. NPCs in DM dungeons will scale to match the general level of your party. Currently, you will not earn any XP or token rewards when playing through a DM dungeon using your own character.
The amount of power that Dungeon Maker Avatars have has been significantly increased.
Players may now publish a base of 3 Dungeon Maker zones. More publish slots are earned as players unlock more templates.


MERCENARIES
Gaeri Tallspire and Firus Scorchtouch have abandoned their job as a mercenary for a short time.
The "Back Off" command will now work for Mercenaries, it will set the assist to "none" for you.
Fixed a bug where doing a dungeon finder group with mercs could put your character into an ungroupable state.
Mercenaries will now count towards the 3 member minimum for Bloodletter.


COMBAT
Fixed an issue where your character would sometimes spin and face away from an NPC they were fighting.


TRADESKILL APPRENTICE
Tradeskill Apprentice items now display who created them.


BEASTLORDS
Enchanted warder spell’s default appearance has been changed to a flying snake.
Fixed an issue with the meatbeast that allowed players to tame it. If you have the appearance your warder spell will reset to the original appearance for that spell.


QUESTS
The City of Freeport
The result of finishing the quest “How the Mighty Fall” should now be apparent within the Temple of War.
The Codex of the Khati Sha should now be available on the sages in South Qeynos, and in the Academy of Arcane Science in Freeport.
Dropping the dialog with Maldreya in “A Dismal Discovery” will no longer prevent you from completing the quest.
If you have “Descent Into Madness” but have already completed “Searching the Sewers for the Strix” you should be able to complete “Descent Into Madness”.
Going forward, if you have “Descent Into Madness” you will not be able to complete “Searching the Sewers for the Strix” unless you complete or drop “Descent Into Madness”.
You no longer need to complete your Freeport racial questline to receive the final Freeport quest “Your Eternal Reward.”
The “Agent of Freeport” achievement for completing the entire Freeport questline will now work properly. This fix is retroactive – if you’ve already completed the final quest you will get the achievement.
The Truth Extractor in “A Dismal Discovery” is now Treasured.

Steamfont
Caustic Action now requires fewer updates, and Mazkeen witch doctors are easier to find.

South Qeynos
Selwyn Oakheart in South Qeynos will now offer level 20 armor quests to beastlords.

Qeynos Harbor
Good-aligned Beastlords can now speak to Ian Cathlan in Qeynos Harbor to begin their level 20 class armor quest line.

Beastlord Epic
A Chance for Redemption: Players can now speak to Velarryk and re-spawn Viax Fauli unlimited times as needed.


SHADER 3.0
Shader 3.0 has been disabled.
Our implementation of Shader 3.0 has had a spotty history since its debut last year. To be frank, it’s cool in some areas and it’s an eyesore in others. Worse, it occasionally crashes users completely. It’s going to take us quite a while to make it work they way it should, and until we get that work done, we don’t want users to be crashing while using it. So we are disabling this feature for now. We have every intention of bringing it back (or some version of a graphics shader improvement that’s even better than this one), but it won’t be soon. EQII still looks fantastic with the original shaders, and in fact, it often looks far better than when using Shader 3.0, so we hope this inconvenience will be very minor for you.


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