The highlights:

• New group instance: Zraxth’s Unseen Arcanum
• Spell visuals updated; many casting sounds reverted; many casting animations reverted
• New “Mount” and “Currency” tabs in the Character window free up bag space
• You can specify one mount as “active” and another as “appearance” — the best of both worlds!
• New outdoor areas in the largest homes in cities across Norrath
• Increased house item counts
• Click-to-cure functionality in group and raid windows
• Target and Implied Target windows show casting activities of NPC targets
• Marketplace items are searchable by name
• Woodworker-crafted totems now stack to 100 (NOT a retroactive change)
• Tradeskill fuels renamed to be more consistent across tiers
• Crafted ammo now stacks to 200
• Guild level progression smoothed out (Yay!! This change resulted in us gaining about a level and a half.)
• Guild Harvesting Depot amenity now holds 200 unique items (was 150)
• New house item rewards for Kingdom of Sky questlines
• New usable doors available from City Festival merchants
• More tiles available from Moonlight Enchantments merchants
• Interesting developments in Greater Faydark: Orcs are trying to burn down Kelethin, and kobolds have overrun the former location of Spire Shadow Outpost!

Click through to read the patch notes in full…

GU 57 goes live in a few short hours, and here are some highlights that may interest you:

• Regions of Interest: Many quests will now highlight areas on the map to show where updates can be obtained
• Total revamp to the UI appearance
• Inventory and Persona combined into new Character window
• Newer version of spells will overwrite older versions in hotbars instead of being inserted into a blank hotbar space
• Lots of classes have been redesignated as “neutral”
• Major spell effects revamp
• Inner zone travel locations now support path linking
• Appearance slots no longer restricted to level 20+
• Kunark writ agent in the guild hall now offers writs to New Halas citizens
• Harvesting NPCs won’t spam individual harvests anymore (yay!)
• LOTS of class progression/ability changes
• New tradeskill quests for level 10+ crafters
• New tradeskill quest lines in Butcherblock and Steamfont
• “Pristine” designation removed from all crafted items
• Gorowyn has been overhauled to ease travel within the city

Click through for the patch notes in full!

I’ve just finished updating our Guild Hall Guide! It includes new maps and icons, and it’s new code means it will be easier to update as the guild levels and buys more amenities.

There will be more updates to the guide coming soon; I plan on creating a page with the various methods members can use to reach the guild hall, which will feature character names and house addresses that will make it easy to find a Magic Door.

I’ve just finished a page entitled “How Can I Contribute?” It outlines some of the ways in which members can help the guild. Check it out, and let me know if you have anything to add!

How Can I Contribute?

The long-awaited GU56 is hitting the live servers today, bringing new zones, changes to the travel system, and lots of other improvements and bug-fixes. You can read the patch notes here!

Some highlights:

• New starting zone: New Halas (in the Frostfang Sea)
• New “storyline” addition to the quest journal — make sure you’re using an updated mod!
• Travel system revamp:
  • Bells & carpets consolidated into one travel category
  • No need to harvest Blessed Shrubbery to travel to a druid ring
  • Internal zone travel access quests/location taggings are now optional
  • Several additional zones now have internal travel systems
  • Static Ulteran spire portals added to the few spire destinations that didn’t have them before
  • Call spells’ cast time reduced to 10 seconds
• Shader 3.0 is now available!
• Queen’s Colony and Outpost of the Overlord are no longer available as starting areas for new characters
• New “Render Mounts” option (Options > Display > Animation):
  • Render all mounts all the time
  • Hide mounts during combat
  • Hide mounts all the time
• Guild hall Hunter Hireling now returns tier 8 and tier 9 meats
• Carpets, discs, and cloud mounts all have Glide
• Harvesting Depots now also store world event raw harvests
• More red shiny collections for mastercrafters
• Mastercrafted items have been improved
• Research times of lower-level quests have been reduced

The servers are still down, but keep your eyes peeled; they should be coming up within the next hour or two!

GU56 will bring New Halas to the live servers, but it also has lots of other changes in store. The way we travel across Norrath will be changing, and as a result some guild hall amenities will be updated with new locations and appearances! You can read more about the upcoming modifications here.

Long story short, the Magic Carpet to the Sinking Sands and the Mariner’s Bell: Shattered Lands that we already have in the guild hall will be redundant — they will both take us to all the same locations. This means that we can remove one of those amenities in order to free up a slot for something new!

This is the perfect opportunity for us to try to raise enough status to purchase the Guild Strategist that we’ve been eyeballing for the last year. We’ll have the amenity slot opened up soon, and we have more than enough coin to buy it. Our only obstacle at this point is to raise the amount of status needed: 20 million. (ouch!)

As of this post, our status drive is GO! We need at least 20 million status in the guild hall escrow by the time that GU56 goes live. Keep in mind that we still have to pay our weekly upkeep between now and then, and any deposited status beyond what we need to purchase the Strategist will be applied to future upkeep and amenity costs.

Not sure how to participate? It’s easy! Just complete adventure or tradeskill writs (aka “City Tasks”) or Heritage quests or sell status loot to our Commodities Exporter inside the guild hall in order to gain personal status points. To donate status to the guild, right-click on the guild hall door or type /house while inside the hall to bring up the housing window. Click the “Deposit” tab, then donate as much or as little status as you want. Remember that status deposited into the guild hall escrow account is non-refundable, but escrow coin and status is never lost, even if we move to another guild hall.

Good luck to everyone, and let’s get those points rolling in!!

The winner of the level 64 guild hall amenity poll has been purchased! You can find Aoife Bristlethorn, the guild hunter hireling, downstairs next to her fellow harvesters. She will bring back fish, pelts, and meats (if meats are available from dens in the tier you specify) for your crafting enjoyment!

With our level 64 goal reached, it’s time to look ahead to our level 66 guild hall amenity; you can find a new poll to the right. :)

I’ve added a new page to our guild documents: the Code of Honor. These are common-sense guidelines that all guild members should be familiar with. Check it out!

We’re going to need a tie-breaker on our level 64 amenity poll to the right! If you haven’t voted already, please do so. :)

For a great run-down of the various available amenities and what they do, check out EQ2i’s Guild Hall Amenities article.

Brewday is here again! This live event starts today and runs through the 22nd. Make sure you visit your home city to pop into the Bar of Brell, and head out to Antonica to help the Avatar of Below in exchange for a new quest reward.

Check out the EQ2Players.com writeup, and drool over the new craftable items over at EQ2 Traders!