More neat changes!

-Spells have a small variance in numbers (purely cosmetic, no real change in dps or what-have-you).
-Loading a spellset no longer requires you to de-mem all your spells first.
-Worn Damage Shields now function properly.
-Harmony is now AE and other similar spells have better functionality.
-You can use /target on invis players if you have a see invis spell.
-More usability changes in the same vein.
-Several tradeskill recipes fixed.

HOORAY!

Bards can now attack with a weapon in their Primary hand while holding a true Instrument in their Secondary hand, rather than having the Instrument take up both slots.

Some adjustments or additions may follow in the future, but for now try it out and report any bugs etc!

Few pet-related changes as of a few days ago:

*Changed how pets benefit from equipping weapons. In the past a weapon's DMG could replace a pet's maximum per-hit damage, but only if the weapon DMG was higher than the pet's natural damage after Focus Effects and whatnot. At higher levels, this basically meant that pets only benefited from procs and stats on weapons. Now, in the new system, a pet's per-hit melee damage will ALWAYS benefit from having a weapon equipped, gaining a bonus to their final maximum damage based on the weapon's ratio. Higher weapon damage/delay ratios give higher damage bonuses. So a pet will always be better off even with a no stats, no proc, low damage rusty dagger than with no weapon at all, no matter what level they are.

*Changed pet follow behavior somewhat; they now follow their owner on a leash rather than automatically taking a position to the south-west of their owner. Thanks to Dev-Jumbers for this one.

*Added two new level 65 pet procs for Beastlords: Spirit of Tearing and Spirit of Soothing. Tearing is a new damaging proc which lowers the target's AC and resistances for a short time, providing a small boost to the offense of the Beastlord and his allies. Soothing grants a small group heal proc, benefiting from the Beastlord's Focus Effects. But only one of these procs can be run at a time, so you'll have to decide which is best for your situation!

Late last night our hosting service experienced some major difficulties and the Shards of Dalaya webpage, forums, IRC and login were taken offline.

Our host has reestablished connection and we are back in action. We apologize for any inconvenience.

We do not expect this to happen again anytime soon but for future reference if the patcher ever tells you that login is down you can still see if the game servers are up by clicking directly on "eqw.exe" in the patcher folder. Please only use this when login is down - you may experience problems in game otherwise.