A few questions before I resubscribe

[neofit]

Hi all!

I am glad the game is still alive, not thanks to my patronage though...

Now, I've spent a couple of hours trying to figure out what has changed in the last year (besides me losing my plot and half finished house I suppose), and I can't find any single source of information. Like you know, when Sony wants people to come back to EQ2 they set up a page that lists the *major* changes that they put in-game (like 1100 new quests, more solo content, no more full interdependancy between crafters, etc.). I can't seem to find anything like that for what happened in the last year in Horizons.

So maybe someone can take a little time to answer a few questions? Here goes, in no particular order, from the top of my head. Feel free to provide links when available, thanks.

- I read about armor, weapons and tools dyes. What is it, how does it work? Are the dyes created with alchemy? Can my armorer apply them to already crafted armor? Does it work for all tiers?

- I remember one time in beta, right before release, the item customization window worked, as well as the item preview for a few days. I could change hilts on a couple of swords as well as the handle and shape of a shield, and see the customized item in the preview window. Is item customization in, for weapons and armor, and is the preview working?

- I've played EQ2 and WoW in the meantime. In these games I rarely killed anything if it wasn't for a quest. How is the quest situation in Hz nowadays, for both crafters and adventurers? Do I have to explore every nook and cranny to find the 3 NPCs who would give a quest for my level, or is there a quest line, a main one, a class one, etc.? How does one get the Trophy quests, and what reward do they give? I'd rather not go to some web site to find quests, it ruins immersion.

- IIRC last year that devs were planning a combat revamp. Because let's face it, it *was* a bit yawn-y. The characters were spending more time looking at each other between rounds than doing anything ;). Has the combat revamp been done?

- How is the resource situation? IIRC, as soon as you were above Iron/Silver, you had to waste most of your game time running god knows where for a backpack of raw resources, then back to town to make bars, etc. A pure SOE-esque timesink, rather hard to swallow for any lengthy period of time.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Thanks.

[Varangaard]

Greetings! To answer your questions:

- Armor dyes have been in game for a good long while. Dye is created by an alchemist, and is applied to armor pieces during creation. It is applied like techs are, but it will not eat up a tech slot. Weapon and tool dye kits have been only recently discovered by Istarians, and currently the only way to dye those items is to apply a dye kit to an existing one. Dye kits too are created by alchemists but have much more rarer components than normal dyes.

- Weapon customization is in and the preview window is operational. For some reason customizing the looks is called 'tricking' by the developers. Armor cannot be customized beyond the use of dyes.

- There are more quests in game, but don't expect massive amounts of them as in WoW. Most of your level grind you'll be doing outside quests. Now, as for trophy hunters, they exist in every racial NPC city (that is, not in player-built settlements) and they offer you kill tasks that change roughly at every five levels. This means you go out and kill stuff until you have as many trophies as the hunter has requested, then talk with them again to receive a money and experience reward. Note that you can sell trophies to hunters even if you are not on a kill task (or the trophies are from mobs you can't currently get tasks for) but you'll only get a money reward, no experience.

- The combat revamp you remember was probably the rewrite of the combat engine, because was laggy and couldn't always keep up to date in mass battles. The combat engine has been rewritten and combat lag is history, but combat itself works as before.

- The resource fields were completely revamped during the server merges. Don't expect to find most anything where it used to be outside starter isles. Iron and silver are readily accessible. There are resource processing stations in the wilderness as well as in cities; the crafting is many times further assisted by player-built crafting stations if their plots happen to be sitting near resource fields. These player-made crafting stations, by the way, offer a skill bonus when they are used; +25 at a beginner building, +50 at journeyman, and +75 at expert station.

edit: Oh yes, almost forgot, higher-tier metal resources were revamped recently. Steel, that used to be iron bars plus nickel ore, is now iron ore plus nickel ore and you can find some iron nodes on nickel fields. Cobalt, which used to be steel bar plus cobalt ore, is now nickel ore plus cobalt ore, and you can find some nickel nodes on cobalt fields. Mithril, which used to be pure metal, is now an alloy of platinum ore and mithril ore and you can find some platinum nodes on mithril fields. Further, there are some dwarven mines (rebuitl by players by now, I think) near resource fields which will contain nodes of the 'secondary' ore. Platinum mine by the mithril field, for example.

Hope this answer most of your concerns.

[neofit]

Thanks Varangaard. I'll pop the installation disk after this mail.

About the Trophy Hunters: they don't give any item reward, like I remember the ones in DAoC did - something to put in your home?

Also, your sig got me worried: we Europeans are not getting any CS (what a surprise [:P])? No GMs, no Events?

Thanks.

[Varangaard]

Interesting idea with the trophy hunter item rewards, but no, at the moment all you get is money and exp. While we have the ability to build houses and other structures (and soon dragons get to build their lairs) there is presently no method to furnish your house. The devs may have made some stealth progress towards furniture, but I'm pretty sure anything related to them is trumped by dragon lair work, confectioner revamp and the school revamp.

As for European situation; CS exists, but can be veeery slow with 'difficult' or 'uncomfortable' cases sitting idle for a long time without attention. For example, my guild's Guildhouse structures were ransacked last July and we still don't know if it was through an exploit or a dishonest recruit. The Worldmaster/Event things go hand in hand. While we naturally get the scripted events, quests and world changes, Unity seems to have no worldmaster activity to run spur-of-the-moment events, for example an Aegis attack on a town. Granted, we have had such events, but only occasionally. US servers get a lot more of them.

[neofit]

Some things never change. Just tried to re-activate my account, filled in my information and bam! "Error code: Unknown". Helloooooo, let me give you my money! :) Filled in CS ticket, we'll se how it goes.

[Varangaard]

Don't know how you tried to do it, but the correct procedure is to login with your email address and password, then (after getting a complaint that your payment has come due) proceed to make a new payment. If that procedure failed then, yes, time for a support ticket. Most likely gets processed quickly, as it is a money matter. [:P] Note that CS works only on weekdays, not weekends.

[neofit]

Yes, it's after I enter my name and address that I am get the error page. Glad I am on a Sunday everning and not a Friday night with plans to playall week-end ;).

BTW, do we still get massive lag during events, like 0.1 fps like it used to be with a few dozen people defending an area or the combat rewrite made things better?

[imported_tjl]

prob not .1 fps, but it can be slow if you don't adjust your graphics settings accordingly. The difference is night and day though.

[Tribunal]

prob not .1 fps, but it can be slow if you don't adjust your graphics settings accordingly. The difference is night and day though.

you can actually marco /setpref commands to hotkeys so you can easily switch them between towns, spawns, fights, events, and the sort.

[neofit]

They have apparently fixed some stuff, and I'm In I'm In I'm In I'm In I'm In! [:D] The CS ticket has till not been replied to.

[Lascivious Goat]

They have apparently fixed some stuff, and I'm In I'm In I'm In I'm In I'm In! [img]/Web//emoticons/emotion-2.gif[/img] The CS ticket has till not been replied to.

Welcome back and have fun in HZ! The new starter town, New Trismus, was totally revamped just last week. More resources available, new trainers and associated machines, new trainer quests, larger variety of monsters and blighted creatures. The school options available now on NT offer a better choice for new players.

[neofit]

Welcome back and have fun in HZ! The new starter town, New Trismus, was totally revamped just last week. More resources available, new trainers and associated machines, new trainer quests, larger variety of monsters and blighted creatures. The school options available now on NT offer a better choice for new players.

Thanks, but I am a grown up now :). The main is a 21 paladin with a few crafting schools in the 40s. I might check Trismus with the baby dragon though, thanks. It used to be my favorite newbie zone back in the day.

[Tribunal]

I might have to say, Pally *chuckles* but thats my opinion [:D]

ANYWHO!, not to let that dicourage you, you might want to check out Lesser Aradoth now, it is super sexy also.

[C`gan]

Just HOW baby is your dragon? Dragons have their own tutorial islands now.