Bards:

We have tweaked around multiple bard Relics in the name of balance.

-Psalm of the Four no longer has an AC or DS component. We hope this makes the spell more situational instead of almost permanently run.

-Relic: Hymn of the Saviour has had a pulsing disease and poison counter added to it. The healing increment effect will also now stack with all other healing increments (including cleric self buffs.)

-Relic: Melody of the Shield has been reduced in efficacy to 15% and given a mana cost to the bard. Moderate AC has also been added to the song.

-Runic: Anthem of Command has had its recast increased.

Be aware that the numbers for the bard spell changes may be tweaked in the coming days. We are also in the process of tweaking specific 6 man encounters that are heavily AE damage reliant down to make up for the bard change.


Enchanters:

-Nejax's Sapping Curse is now Nejax's Dampening Curse. When cast on an NPC this new spell will reduce any and all spell damage emanating from that NPC by 15%.

-The Berserker line of rune spells (Berserker XXX, Bedlam and Rampage) has been changed to the Misdirection line of spells. This new line features a fast casting reagent-less rune that procs an aggro reducing spell on the mob who breaks it.


Wizards/Druids:

-Succor and Evacuation spells now completely wipe all hate on landing. Negative mana effects have been increased to avoid exploitation of this wiping effect.


AAs:

-Enhanced Control now adds more to charm duration. Enchanters get a 100% increase on all mobs. Druids and Necromancers get a 100% increase on animals and undead respectively and a 50% increase on any mob type. Enhanced Control now also gives you an estimate time of control left over your charmed mob on cast.


Cmds:

-/cmd refresh zone time has been cut in half! Instead of zoning to The Nexus and back a player needs only rezone into his current zone. You should notice that this new refresh process should be 60-70% faster than the old one. Thank Secrets from eqemu for this little gem.


Next patch:

-Magicians are likely receiving a 10% spell mitigation buff that hits only Cold, Fire and Magic. I am calling it "Trine" in my head but as it turns out every other dev thinks that Trine is a horrible name. Stay tuned!

Hello Dalaya! Here is what interesting things made it into this patch:

1 - Admin-Tao's long-awaited fletching revamp is now LIVE. Experience new heights of arrow-making rapture.

2 - All the remaining racial changes are now live. Refer to previous news post to see what you get from being who you are.

3 - Mansion of Portals changes now more complete. be sure to talk to the wizard standing guard over an entrance portal for the low-down on what to expect!

4 - Some new content and various minor bug fixes (nothing earth-shattering here).

We have revamped the innate abilities of each race in the game. We are hoping this change will make things a bit more interesting and balanced (no more supergnomes!) Be aware that numbers may change in the future as we get everything situated!



HUMAN:
+5% Experience Gain
+10% Skill Learning Rate Excluding Tradeskill
+5% Increase to all positive faction hits.
-5% Magic Type Damage Received.
+1% Haste
-10 Resist Adjust to all Cast Spells


BARBARIAN:
Slam
+2.5% Experience Gain
-30% Duration to Fear targeting the player
-30% Duration to Stun targeting the player
+1% Critical melee chance.
-2.5% Decrease to all negative faction hits.
-5% Cold and Magic Type Damage Received.
-10 Resist Adjust to Cold and Magic spells


ERUDITE
+2.5% Experience Gain
+10% Skill Learning Rate Does not affect tradeskill
-30% Detrimental Mana Effects
+1% Spell Critical Chance


WOOD ELF
Infravision
Friendly To Animals
+8% Increased Movement Speed while in Forest.
+2% Critical Spell and Melee while Outdoors.
+1% Parry Chance during the Day.
-20% Duration to Mezmerization targeting the player.
-20% Duration to Charm targeting the player.
50 or +10% after 50 to Forage
50 or +10% after 50 to Hide

HIGH ELF
Infravision
-50% Duration to Mezmerization targeting the player.
-50% Duration to Charm targeting the player.
-10% to Spell Fizzle Rate
+2% Evocation Skill
+2% Conjuration
+2% Alteration
+1 Mana Regeneration


DARK ELF
Ultravision
-20% Duration to Mezmerization targeting the player.
-20% Duration to Charm targeting the player.
+2% Critical Spell and Melee at night.
+1% Riposte Chance at night.
50 or +10% after 50 to Hide


HALF ELF
Infravision
-10% Duration to Mezmerization targeting the player.
-10% Duration to Charm targeting the player.
+2.5% Experience Gain
+2.5% Skill Learning Rate [Does not affect tradeskill
+2.5% Increase to all Positive Faction Hits.
+0.5% Parry Chance during the day.
+0.5% Riposte Chance at night.
-2.5% Magic Type Damage Received.
-5 Resist Adjust to all Cast Spells
+1% Movement Speed.

DWARF
Infravision
-30% Duration to Fear targeting the player.
-30% Duration to Stun targeting the player
+1% Critical Spell and Melee while Drunk.
+2% Critical Spell and Melee Underground.
+1% Melee Mitigation when Underground.
+10% to all stats gained from drink.
50 or +5% after 50 to Mining


TROLL
Infravision
Slam
Regeneration (Much Higher than Before)
-35% Duration to Fear targeting the player
-35% Duration to Stun targeting the player
-10% Skill Learning Rate [Does not affect tradeskill
+15% to all regeneration effects.


OGRE
Infravision
Slam
Consumes Food Faster
-25% Duration to Fear targeting the player
-25% Duration to Stun targeting the player
-15% Self Inflicted Damage
-12.5% Stamina Drain

HALFLING
Infravision
Consumes Food Faster
Innate Death Save
+1% to Melee and Spell Dodge
+10% Death Save Spell Effect
+10% to all stats gained from food.
+3% Movement Speed
50 or +10% after 50 to Sneak
50 or +10% after 50 to Hide
50 Baking

GNOME
Infravision
+2% Movement Speed when Indoors.
+3% to Proc Rate.
+1% Evocation
+1% Alteration
+1% Conjuration
50 Tinkering

IKSAR
Infravision
Natural Armor
Regeneration
-2.5% Experience Rate
-10% Skill Learning Rate [Does not affect tradeskill
50 or +10% after 50 to Forage
-5% Fire Type Damage Received

FROGLOK
Ultravision
Improved Swimming
Improved Lung Capacity
+2% to heals landing on self.
+5% Critical Spell and Melee underwater.
+5% Critical Spell and Melee while raining.
+10% Skill Learning Rate [Does not affect tradeskill

VAH SHIR
Infravision during day, Ultravision at night.
Consumes food faster
50 or +10% after 50 to Safe Fall
50 or +10% after 50 to Sneak
+2% Healing Ability at night.
+2% Haste at night.


PS from Cyzaine - Fully implemented deity quests (Marlow, Jayla, Tarhyl, Sihala, Althuna, Gradalsh) now have new loot dropping for the mid point event and finale event portions.

Druid Heals:

Druidic healing has been overhauled with the new addition of the Soothe healing over time line. Specific changes are as follows:

The spells Soothe (L19) and Greater Soothe (L44) have been added to Druid spell vendors.

Circle of Soothing (L63), a group heal over time, now drops from appropriate monsters throughout the game.

Ancient:Nature's Soothing is now a heal over time spell in the Soothe line (meaning it does not stack with other Soothe spells).

Relic: Sihala's Empathy is now a heal over time spell in its own line (meaning it stacks with all other heal over time spells).

Revitalize and Chloroshock have been increased in efficacy in response to the loss of heal per second caused by the change to the Druid relic and ancient listed above.

A single target druid buff is in the works for next patch that will further a druids single target healing abilities - albeit much less so than these changes.


Cyrtho Malath:

Dev-Marza has gone through and revamped Cyrtho Malath to make its risk versus reward more up to date with the current norm in the game. Be sure to check it out! (Note that the final encounter of the zone was not changed.)


Trainee Quests:

Dev-Trainee-Nowaij has added in a new quest to Oggok that may make the city a bit more accessible.

Dev-Alexxis added some new sorely needed intrigue into Everfrost that is worth checking out.

Dev-Supreme shows that living up in a tree is not all it is cracked up to be with some new additions to Greater Faydark,

GM-Rari has been traipsing around Goblinskull and Kaladim. It turns out that a silver crown corporal and a blackscale raider are both having troubles with the ghosts in deep Kaladim. Who will you help?

WE, the SoD development team, are looking for a number of brave souls to journey into the dark and murky waters of content creation OR hard-core C++ coding and web-tools development!

Have you ever thought about making new mobs and quests for an MMO? Alternately, are you a fully qualified C++ programmer with some spare time to kill? Head on over to the Recruitment Thread and ask questions or submit an application! This could be your break into the big-time!

*Mages who know Words of Power for their pets may now view and activate them via /s.
*Empowered Flock should now work without crashing zones.
*Shadow Knights who know Servant Training techniques can now also activate them via /s. (This won't interfere with your current Style setting).

*Tomes involving group healing effects should now work correctly and also display healing messages.
*Tomes involving Necromancer pets mimicking lifetap spells should now work.
*Added /cm itemexpmessages command to toggle Expable Item experience messages.
*Made a slight change to how Adventure Bands split exp between Band members who are in the same group and zone at the time of a kill. Details HERE. It works.

Read for more info.

* Prison Sanctum - Drakes and Eyes fights revamped, Essence of the Mother fight tweaked.

* Newport Sewers - Cult Priest (newbie cleric) quest line extended.

Thanks Marza!

* The Fae now have treasure urns in which they keep their belongings, and of course the royalty have the finest things of all...

* A new subspecies each of fungusaurs and rogue dreadnaughts has evolved in Hmalath.

* The Sporeborn Rex and the Kye-Kye Hives have withdrawn temporarily, racing each other to be the first to complete a new system of navigation for their minions, which promises to put significantly less stress on their mental processes. Time will tell how effective this development is, but preliminary tests show a 40% drop in required brain tissue.

Our first foray into some pet class related rebalancing. As with any patch like this, everything is subject to change.

1) Soulbonded buffs on pets.
Not quite real soulbond, this implementation makes your pet buff himself with any soulbonded buffs that you have cast on you. The pet casts them on himself on zone or summon. The buff itself is NOT really soulbonded, so can be overwritten by better buffs. However if he dies, he'll get whatever you have soulbonded at the time of his resummon. This change affects all pet owners, but only their primary pet. Swarm pets of all kinds are excluded.

Please report any oddities related to buffs, be they stacking concerns or missed SB buffs (/pet report , lets you see the buffs remember!)

2) Mage Elemental Form changes.
Nicely summed up in the wiki.
Air I, Air II, Air III
Earth I, Earth II, Earth III
Fire I, Fire II, Fire III
Water I, Water II, Water III

Elemental forms now cast on both the caster and the pet, you both get full benefits. Procs have been added to many forms, proc rate increases as the form level does. Forms should change what the pet looks like, but it doesn't change your base pet at all. Forms do not stack and should overwrite each other.

Report any bugs with the elemental forms right away. Stacking is the biggest potential culprit.



On an unrelated side note, the clicky Concealing Strikes was very likely acting like a 75% slow for the last few years... we've adjusted it so it should actually help you now, but report any unusual behavior with it.