Probably the biggest non-expansion news is that EQ2 is going free-to-play, and the EQ2X  and subscription EQ2 services are merging. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the way you play the game will change: You can keep paying a monthly fee to continue accessing the game and its features as you always have, or you can go with a free account and keep playing the game whenever you like (albeit at reduced capabilities, such as item, class, and race limitations). You can find more answers about the F2P changes here.

Another big announcement is the arrival of the biggest yearly festival in all of Norrath: Frostfell! As of this posting, it will run from December 6 through January 6 (subject to change, of course), and this year’s celebration brings new quests, new rewards, and new craftable items. EQ2 Traders has its usual superb write-ups here, and ZAM has updated their Frostfell hub as well.

And now to the expansion! The biggest bullet points are:

• Beastlords
• Mercenaries
• Tradeskill Apprentices
• Freeport Revamp
• Dungeon Maker
• Reforging
• EQ2 Share — post to Twitter & Facebook from in-game!

I’ll post the full patch notes here as soon as they’re available, but in the meantime, check out ZAM’s AoD info hub as well as EQ2 Traders’ preliminary AoD write-up.

This post from Cyliena over at ZAM sums everything up nicely:

All servers will come down at 12:01am PST on Tuesday, December 6, 2011 for the Age of Discovery and Game Update 62 patch. Estimated downtime is currently 12 hours; U.S. servers are anticipated to come back online around 12:00pm PST (noon). Due to the volume of data involved, international servers will experience extended downtime. When patch notes are available we will put them on our Game Update 62 page.

In addition, SOE account management and commerce services will be offline for all games during the transition period. Forums may also experience periodic outages. Remember that the EQ2X forums will be locked tomorrow morning at 10:00am PST. All EQ2X forum users should take this time to register anew on the EQII forums; you can start posting there now!

Beginning at 8:00am PST there will be a live webcast, Countdown to the Age of Discovery, on TwitchTV. Various members of the EQII team will be interviewed on the webcast. It is expected to run until 9:45am PST.

A producer’s letter from Dave “Smokejumper” Georgeson is also expected tomorrow morning. We’ll keep you updated once that is available. In addition, the EverQuest2.com website is being relaunched into its new incarnation and should be available after the downtime. Pre-orders for Age of Discovery will remain open until 11:59pm PST tonight, December 5.

During the downtime you are welcome to join us in the #EQ2 channel of ZAM’s IRC chat. Feldon of EQ2Wire also has set up a ZAM IRC java applet that you can use.

• ZAM DoV Guides (ZAM)
• DoV Tradeskill Preview (EQ2 Traders)
• Launch Day Schedule (EQ2 Players)

Without further ado, here are the patch notes!

Following the events of Sentinel’s Fate, the twin Swords of Destiny, Soulfire and the Qeynos Claymore, have been drained of their powers, setting the stage for the destruction of the EverQuest universe. The prophecy known as Age’s End begins to unfold in the legendary continent of Velious, and it is here where the war for Norrath will arise. For there to be any chance to save Norrath, the Swords of Destiny must be restored.

Norrathian guardians who undertake this burden will be tested by labyrinthine dungeons, the harsh Velious tundra, and powerful creatures including the God of War himself, Rallos Zek. To succeed will mean ultimate glory. To fail could mean annihilation.

Destiny of Velious Features:

• Soar high above Norrath with flying mounts
• Crawl your way through 10 dangerous dungeons
• Complete four new Heritage Quests
• Battle through more than 300 new quests
• Craft through more than 60 new tradeskill quesfts
• Conquer one new truly massive contested dungeon
• Discover two new overland zones
• Defeat four new raid instances
• Collect more than 1,000 new weapons and items
• Journey through a new Signature Quest line
• Slay more than 30 new creatures
• Equip more than 100 new armor sets
• New AA abilities with an increased cap of 300

Click through to read the patch notes in full…

TARGET TAGGING SYSTEM

You can now tag NPCs and even PCs with the new Target Tagging System.

• Characters can be assigned an icon and/or number combination that your group or raid can use to easily communicate tactics.
• Press CTRL-SHIFT-T or right-click your Target window and choose “Tag” to open the Tagging interface.
• You must be in a group to tag characters.
• Tagging commands can be dragged from the Tag window directly to a hotbar, or assigned a hotkey from the Options->Controls->Tagging menu.
• Tagging icons can also be disabled under Options->User Interface->Name & Chat Bubble
• Tags can be removed by toggling the icon or number that already exists on a character
• Tagging can also be done via macro by using the /tagtarget command:
  • /tagtarget – to tag your target with a specific icon.  Ex: /tagtarget skull
  • /tagtarget – to tag your target with a numeric value.  Ex: /tagtarget 1
  • /tagtarget clear – to clear your target’s tag

NEW GRAPHICS OPTIONS

In the options under Display (Advanced) – Special Effects you will find the following graphics settings:

• Depth of Field
  • Applies a focus range to the rendered scene.  Objects in the distance and too close will appear slightly blurry, creating a sense of haze in the distance and enhancing the scene with a more fantastic look.
• Ambient Occlusion
  • Darkens cracks and crevices where lighting would naturally dissipate, bringing better depth and shading to everything.
• Sun Shafts
  • Sun rays have diffractive beams creating very cool effects as the sun peeks through trees or around objects.

Water Reflections

• Water reflections improved to match geometry better, especially when on flying mounts. Zones that don’t have this yet will be adjusted with future updates.  Complex quality options have been changed to a simple on or off. When off the sky color will be reflected.
  • Display (Advanced)  - Water – Water Reflections

COMMUNITY CALENDAR

• We’ve added a new in-game calendar so you can keep up-to-date on the monthly holidays and special events.
• Access the calendar from the EQII Start Menu.
• Mouse-over any event in the calendar for more details about that event.
• Daily header images allow you to easily see events that span multiple days.
• Guilds can also make use of the calendar by creating guild-only events.
• For guild members with the proper permissions, right-click on any day of the month and choose “Create Guild Event”
• Members with permission to manage events will be able to create, edit and delete guild events.

USER INTERFACE

• Attribute tooltips now more clearly show the bonuses and amounts of those bonuses they are giving.
• The Recipe Window will now perform much better for players that have a large number of recipes.
  • The server was optimized to reduce lag related to players with large numbers of recipes.
  • NOTE: Third-party UI’s will need to update the recipe window.
• The resurrection accept window will now close itself if you revive instead.
• Changed description of mount speed to “Ground Mount Speed” so it wouldn’t be confused with air mount speed.
• Spell Multi Attack now shows in the default UI on the spells page of the character persona window.
• You can now shift-click achievements to link them in chat.  Clicking on the link will open your journal and display the specified achievement.
• You will now autojoin the crafting chat channel when achieving level 10 as a crafter.
• The group quest journal now updates when a member of your group completes a step of his quest.
• The chat option for spell flavor text is turned off by default for new characters.
• Added a pet threat meter and detriment icons with click-to-cure to the pet window.
• You can now spend tokens from a mix of inventory tokens and currency window tokens.
• You can now search your entire inventory, including bank and house vault, for items by their name.
• Click the “Find” button on the Character Window just above the inventory slots.
  • As a shortcut, you can use the command /finditem.
• Custom UI modders:  Added Self.AverageItemScore to dynamic data. It is the average item score of all of your currently equipped items.
• Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed a display bug with the XP bar when at max level.
  • Fixed a bug with ExperienceCurrent dynamic data when at max level.
  • Fixed a bug where your currently selected quest could change when zoning or logging out.
  • Fixed a bug causing you to not be able to move a bag from shared bank to normal bank.
  • Fixed a bug where the sorting of your knowledge book wouldn’t save when zoning.
  • Fixed a bug where large characters’ conversation windows would not be visible from a certain distance.

MECHANICS / ITEMIZATION CHANGES

Hate Gain

• The cap for hate gain modifiers was raised from 50 to 100%. The hate decrease modifier cap remains at 50%.

Stat Changes

With the launch of Sentinel’s Fate, we introduced the initial stage of attribute refinement. By defining a primary attribute for each archetype, we made it easier for players to understand which items they should be chasing to equip their character. With Velious we are moving more towards this by folding Power into your primary attribute, and also by removing the small side benefits from these stats such as increased avoidance or resists.

When defining primary attributes, the unintended side effect was that some classes got an extra benefit because they naturally had a lot of a stat where other classes did not. A tank having high strength does not benefit from anything outside of the power increase it gives, while a scout not only became more powerful but gained an avoidance and critical mitigation advantage because they were easily capping that benefit. The same goes for wisdom – Priests gained added resistances, but all items used the same resist values so there was no compensation for the fact that other classes could not cap that benefit.  In any case where the side benefit was intended for the archetype, we added it through self-buffs or as a basic benefit of the archetype – for instance, scouts now get bonus avoidance through self-buffs, rather than gaining it by increasing their agility.

• Agility and Intelligence no longer grant a bonus to critical mitigation.
• Agility no longer provides a bonus to avoidance.
  • The base avoidance bonus of scouts is now attached to scout self-buffs instead of being an innate effect.
  • Added base avoidance bonus to many buffs that grant agility.
  • Removed agility from self-buffs of classes that gain no benefit from agility.
  • The following spells are affected:
    • Assassin: Cunning Defense, Villainy
    • Bruiser: Bodyguard, Bob and Weave, Brutality
    • Brigand: Street Smarts
    • Coercer: Signet of Intellect
    • Dirge: Harl’s Rousing Tune, Death’s Door
    • Fury: Feast, Peerless Predator, Primal Fury, Spirit of the Bat
    • Guardian: Armored
    • Inquisitor: Fanaticism
    • Monk: Crouching Tiger
    • Mystic: Ancestral Avatar
    • Paladin: Knight’s Stance
    • Ranger: Hunter’s Instinct, Survival Instincts
    • Shadowknight: Lucan’s Pact
    • Swashbuckler: Bladeweaver
    • Troubador: Daelis’ Dance of Blades
    • Warden: Favor of the Wild, Spirit of the Bat

• Wisdom no longer gives a bonus to Arcane, Noxious and Elemental resists.
• Buffs that grant Wisdom now also grant spell resistance.  If a self-buff was granting Wisdom to a class that gains no benefit from Wisdom, this has been removed and replaced with spell resistance.
• The following spells are affected:
  • Defiler: Sinister Countenance
  • Fury: Feast, Forest Spirit, Primal Fury
  • Guardian: Armored
  • Illusionist: Rune of Thought
  • Inquisitor: Fanaticism
  • Monk: Inner Calm
  • Mystic: Ursine Avatar
  • Necromancer: Mortality Mark
  • Paladin: Crusade
  • Templar: Virtue
  • Troubador: Raxxyl’s Rousing Tune
  • Warden: Aspect of the Forest, Favor of the Wild

• In order to further offset the loss of spell resistance that was formerly gained from wisdom, a caster-only spell resistance component has been added to the following buffs:
  • Mages: Magi’s Shielding
  • Assassin: Villainy
  • Berserker: Aggressive Defense
  • Bruiser: Bob and Weave
  • Defiler: Sinister Countenance
  • Dirge: Death’s Door
  • Fury: Peerless Predator
  • Guardian: Iron Will
  • Inquisitor: Sacred Armor
  • Monk: Inner Calm
  • Mystic: Ursine Avatar
  • Paladin: Blessing of the Paladin
  • Ranger: Hunter’s Instinct
  • Shadowknight: Innoruuk’s Caress
  • Swashbuckler: Bladeweaver
  • Templar: Holy Armor
  • Troubador: Daelis’ Dance of Blades
  • Warden: Warden of the Forest

Health and Power mods merged into attributes

We have streamlined the way you gain health and power bonuses, and no longer add “+health” or “+power” stats to items.  You now gain health by increasing your stamina, and gain power by increasing your primary archetype stat.

Before Velious, you gained health by collecting items with “+health” on them, and also by increasing your stamina.   This is redundant, since we had two stats giving an identical bonus.  Now each point of stamina will give you 10 health at maximum level.

Similarly, you gained power by collecting “+power” items, and by increasing your primary archetype stat.  Now you’ll just collect your primary archetype stat to increase your power pool.  At maximum level, you gain 10 power per for each point of your primary archetype stat.

“+Health” and “+power” stats will still exist in the form of adornments and buffs.

• The amount of heath you receive per stamina point now increases as you level.
  • You can see the per point bonus on your stamina tooltip on your character window, and the total number of health points from your stamina in your health tooltip.

• The amount of power points you receive per primary attribute point now increases as you level.
  • You can see the per point bonus on your primary attribute tooltip on your character window, and the total number of power points from your primary attribute in your power tooltip.

• Stamina no longer has a cap or a diminishing return curve.

• Your primary attribute power benefits are not capped.

• The formulas for maximum health and maximum power have been altered. The formulas are:
  • Max Health = (base health for class and level) + stamina * health per stamina point
  • Max Power = (base power for class and level) + primary attribute(str, wis, int, agi) * power per attribute point

Threshold Stats

• Critical mitigation is now a required stat for all tiers of content starting with Velious.
  • Previously, critical mitigation was only used in raids; but Velious mobs did not get that memo and they all know how to critically hit. Because of this, critical mitigation is valuable everywhere and Velious itemization reflects this.
  • Each tier of the expansion expects you to have a certain value of critical mitigation give or take a few percentage points. So if you find that you are being hit too hard, you may want to go for some drops in other dungeons to help make things easier.

• Critical chance is now contested against an NPC’s critical avoidance.
  • Critical chance has been turned into the offensive version of critical mitigation. All NPCs have a stat called critical avoidance. This stat is a direct reduction of your chance to critically hit them. This means if an NPC has 30% critical avoidance you would need 130% critical chance to hit him all the time. The critical mitigation and critical avoidance values are displayed as a buff on any NPC you encounter using this mechanic.

Proc/Item Effects

• Procs have been limited to a few slots and specialty items:
  • Weapons
  • Charm
  • Belt (easy/hard mode raids)
  • Cloaks (hard mode raids)
  • New procs have been turned into yellow/red adornments that can be placed in any items that have the properly colored slot.

• War Runes
  • War runes are powerful adornments that drop off of raid bosses.
  • When used these runes will give you an adornment and allow you to buy more of that adornment from a runesmith in the future.
  • War runes represent the more powerful procs and effects from the expansion.

• Class focus effects have been changed to passive effects on armor.
  • Class focus effects have been changed a little. Seven of the ten class/archetype focuses that were on red adornments in Sentinel’s Fate are now built into the armor as passive effects. This allows you more freedom in what you want to put in your red adornment slots.
  • The remaining three focuses have been retained on red adornments, but they offer varying combinations with other stats like crit bonus, potency, or mitigation.
  • Group players will now have access to armor pieces with innate class focuses on them starting with Velketor’s shard armor.  They will be able to get up to three slots with class focus effects.
  • The remaining effects will be on raid armor pieces.
  • While transitioning to the new armor players can still use the old class focus adornments if they choose until they get a piece of armor that has the focus on it.Melee Range Increase, Multi Attack change

• Melee range has been increased to match the maximum range of combat arts
  • Auto-attack range was extended from 2 to 5 meters.
  • Items that increased melee range have had this removed from their spell effects.

• Multi Attack will now grant an additional attack for every 100% over cap.
  • The cap on Multi Attack has been removed.
  • Now if you have more than 100% Multi Attack, you gain a chance to make additional attacks. For instance, if you are at 150% Multi Attack you have 100% chance to hit twice with every auto attack, and a 50% chance to hit a third time.

ABILITIES / ALTERNATE ADVANCEMENT

• Spells that are modified by AAs to get additional effects will have that additional effect’s rank determined by the rank of the AA rather than by the rank of the spell that it is modifying.
• Maintained spells that are no-crit will remain so after zoning.
• Maintained spells that “cannot be modified except by direct means” will remain so after zoning.
• Crits on AE spells are now calculated on a per target basis. This means that you could crit all, some or none of the targets affected by your spell. The chance has not changed, it is just calculated on each target rather than all or nothing. This applies to beneficial and detrimental spells.
• All AA trees will now reset when betraying.

Pet Stat Sharing

• Controllable Pets, including Possess Essence and Charm, will now share the following of their owner’s stats at a 1:1 ratio:
  • Attributes
  • Ability Modifier
  • Potency
  • Crit Bonus
  • Crit Chance
  • Toughness
  • Spell Double Attack
  • Ability Casting Speed
  • Ability Recovery Speed
  • Spell Reuse Speed
  • Ability Reuse Speed
  • Critical Mitigation
• Due to this change, most pet effects have been removed from items.

Deity

• Breath of Karana will no longer prompt players to resurrect if they aren’t dead.

Assassin

• Enhance: Apply Poison should once again increase the damage of the “Hemotoxin”.

Bards

• Victorious Concerto can no longer be modified by potency and can no longer critically hit. The base damage on Victorious Concerto has been doubled.

Berserker

• Adrenaline no longer will reduce damage that would have otherwise killed the caster.

Brigand

• Beg for Mercy now reduces the damage to the targeted ally, rather than intercepting damage. It can be used on the brigand. It now has a 2:30 reuse time.
• Thieves Guild is now an augmentation that cannot be applied to brigands. When the target or brigand uses a chain of combat arts within a five second period of time, the brigand or target gains increased potency for a short duration.
• Focus: Thieves Guild is now a 10% Ability Cast Speed increase to the target.

Coercer

• You can no longer cast Possess Essence on aquatic creatures.

Conjuror

• The Aery Hunter casts an augmentation on their group, granting increased health, health regeneration, power regeneration, parry and mitigation.
• The Aery Stalker is immune to indirect area of effects.

Crusader

• Legionnaire’s Conviction can no longer be modified except by direct means.

Guardian

• Sentry Watch now heals for 3% per rank and cannot crit nor have potency applied. Instead of an intercept, it now reduces the damage by 80% at master.

Illusionist

• Construct of Order is now Theorems. Theorems applies damage to the target when they are struck with a damage spell.
• Enhance: Construct of Order is now Enhance: Theorems and increases the trigger count and damage amount of Theorems.
• Enhance: Theorems and Enhance: Epiphany have been swapped in their locations.
• Chromatic Shower now lasts for 5 seconds and has a 20 second reuse.
• Chromatic Storm now lasts for 6 seconds.
• Time Warp no longer adds additional triggers to Unyielding Will, Bloodletter, Vision of Madness, Brawler’s Tenacity and Divine Favor.

Mystic

• Bolster no longer grants both attributes and maximum health, since Stamina is now directly linked to maximum health.

Necromancer

• Accelerated Decay is now passive and no longer drains health.
• The Nightshade casts an augmentation on their group, granting a chance to reflect hostile spells along with increased defense, reduced hate generation and mitigation.
• The Nightshade is immune to indirect area of effects.

Paladin

• Holy Aid now heals for a greatly increased amount but has a 45 second reuse time. It cannot be interrupted.
• Devout Sacrament now heals for a greatly increased amount. It cannot be interrupted.
• Demonstration of Faith now wards for an increased amount but has a 60 second reuse time. The casting time has been reduced to 1.5 seconds.
• Demonstration of Faith can now be cast while moving.
• Lay on Hands now heals for a greatly increased amount.
• Prayer of Healing now has a 0.5 second casting time and a 9 second reuse time. The power cost has been halved.
• Arch Healing now has a 0.5 second casting time and a 12 second reuse time. The power cost has been halved.
• Enhance: Prayer of Healing now improves reuse speed by 0.5 seconds per point, along with the power cost reduction.
• Enhance: Demonstration of Faith now improves reuse time by 3 seconds per point.

Ranger

• Hawk Attack is now a real summoned pet and will receive bonuses from pet stat sharing and group buffs. The hawk now maintains its hate siphon as long as it lives.
• Coverage now can be cast within six seconds of using an eligible combat art rather than two seconds.
• Sniper Shot has had its damage increased. The damage in PVP Combat remains unchanged.

Summoner

• Minion’s Zeal now allows the scout pet to increase the group’s Multi Attack Chance by 1.5% per rank.

Sorcerer

• Manashield will no longer drain more power based on Potency and Crit Bonus.

Troubador

• Countersong now casts instantly.
• Rejuvenating Celebration also grants an increase to maximum health.

Warlock

• Plaguebringer is now a damage over time ability that applies additional damage every second for eight seconds. The initial hit has not been reduced.

TRADESKILLS

Gaining tradeskill experience has changed.  First time creation and first time pristine creation bonuses have been removed.  Instead tradeskill quests, including writs, give much more experience than they previously did.  This was done in an effort to balance tradeskill classes between each other so that classes with fewer recipes weren’t taking a longer time to level just because they weren’t able to take advantage of the first time bonuses that other classes had access to.  If you do quests, you should find that you level up just as fast, if not faster than you did by making one of each recipe.

ITEMS

• No-Trade and Heirloom items will now remain tradable for 48 hours with any character who was in the group when the encounter was defeated.
  • Once the item is attuned or adorned, it will no longer be tradable with those characters.
  • Note: With this change, Customer Service will no longer fulfill requests to move items that were mistakenly looted. These issues can now be resolved in-game within the 48 hour grace period.
• The Rise of Kunark Focus: Bloodletter will cause Bloodletter to dispel when you remove it.
• Call of the Veteran: Teleporting or summoning a character forces the traveling character to meet the same entry requirements the destination character had to meet to enter the zone.
• Removing an item with “Focus: Holy Armor VII” on it will now remove the “Holy Armor VII” buff.
• Items that increased melee range have had this removed from their spell effects.
• Players can now purchase the house item trophy version of their epic weapons (along with their mythical spell gems & enervated weapon), after they betray by speaking with Jawharah Izzah in Nektulos as long as they have completed “Epic Repercussions”.

FREEBLOODS

• Freebloods now have a selection of voice emotes available to select in the character options.
• You can only buy the vampire appearance items once per character.
• The vampire bonus pack will no longer show in the marketplace if you have already purchased the contents.
• If you have already claimed the freeblood lair deed you will not see it in the marketplace to buy it a second time.
• Freebloods should now use the human bind points in Qeynos and Freeport should they change citizenship.
• The quest chain is now available in Velious to allow you to use your Cloud of Bats ability to fly as if you had a flying mount! Complete those quests and you can fly!

RESEARCH

• When research is complete, you’ll now be notified with a chat message and small popup window instead of an email. The knowledge window icons will also flash until you’ve claimed your new ability.

AMENITIES

• You can now purchase guild hall amenities using a combination of escrow and personal funds!

PLAYER HOUSING

• We improved the warning message when picking up an item when the house (including storage crate items) is at or beyond its max count.

PVP GENERAL

• Fixed a bug where players on PvP servers would get PvE rez effects.

BATTLEGROUNDS

• The “split” command can no longer be used within a Battlegrounds match.

Lucan D’Lere will be merging with Crushbone on February 16! For what to expect, check out Zam’s Server Merger article. Make sure that you read over the character name priority guidelines, and prepare for disruptions in access to chat channels, mail, and friends lists. While you shouldn’t experience any issues to housing or existing mail, I recommend taking the following steps just to cover all your bases:

• Make sure you’ve read all mail in your mailbox and retrieved all attachments. You may not be able to access messages immediately after the server comes up, so sort all that out beforehand.
• Save a copy of each character’s house layout just in case you find things are wonky when the merge is complete. You can save a layout by clicking the “Save Layout” button in your in-home house access window (type /house or right-click on the door).
• Log on each character before the servers come down for the merge. Name priority is given first to characters logged in within the past 60 days, then to the character with the most play-time. You can compare your characters to those on Crushbone by doing a character name search on EverQuest2.com. Click on the character names to compare the total time played.

The last bit of big news is a reminder that Destiny of Velious arrives February 22! Be sure to get your prelude quests wrapped up and your pre-order placed, then brace yourself for all the goodies that will come with the new expansion!

The EQ2 Players site and various EQ2 fansites will be covering the launch minute-by minute. Here are some resources to help get you through the server downtime and take your first steps into the new content:

Sentinel’s Fate Ustream Launch Event

What to Expect on Launch Day

How to Get Started in Sentinel’s Fate

My fellow crafters will find the EQ2 Traders’ SF Clearinghouse quite useful. It will help you make sense of all the new recipes and factions that will be available.

If you use UI mods, be sure to keep an eye on EQ2 Interface so that you can download SF-compatible mods as they are released. There are changes coming to several commonly-used windows, so you may find the list of interface changes useful when it comes to disabling older mods.