As title!

As seen here. (http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts/list.m?topic_id=121056)

<[QT]Destinova> You may begin submitting your questions by typing /msg [QT]Destinova my question here! Tonight's topic is the Secrets of Faydwer.
<[QT]Destinova> Welcome to today's House of Commons chat with the developers of EverQuest!
<[QT]Destinova> To submit a question type /msg [QT]Destinova my question here! - questions sent to the developers will not be answered! Tonight's topic is the Secrets of Faydwer.
<[QT]Destinova> We'll begin with a brief introduction from our guests and then jump straight into the questions. The full logs will be available at http://eq.stratics.com shortly afterward.
<[QT]Destinova> Also, feel free to join #everquest for open chat.


<[Rashere]> Evenin' everyone. I'm Travis, Lead Designer for EQ.
<[Zatozia]> Hey all. I'm Lydia "Zatozia the Torturess" EQ's Community Relations Manager.
<[Ngreth]> Hello. I am Adam "Ngreth" Bell, Game designer of general content and tradeskills.
<[Merloc]> Hello, I'm Keith Turkowski, I do itemization, faction, general content, and the new upcoming Halloween events.
<[Elidroth]> Greetings Program! My name is Doug Cronkhite, and I'm a content designer not really in charge of anything yet, though you can blame me for any goofy spell names in the Secrets of Faydwer, coming soon to a software store near you! (sorry.. shameless plug)
<[Nodyin]> Hello everyone, I'm David Ford and I work on the AA system and various content.


<[QT]Destinova> *Ronda* The SoF Retail box seems to have a poster and real life cards (that won't be included in the digital preorder). Is there any bonus in the digital preorder than buying the retail copy?
<[Rashere]> If you pre-order the digital version, you get the Gnomish Steamfists as a bonus item. The artist really went above and beyond on those and they are, in my opinion, one of the coolest looking hand-held items in the game.
<[Rashere]> Oh, and the digital order gets a different Worg mount than the retail box.


<[QT]Destinova> *Swampfunk* How will the new group armor be designed? I hear it will be very good, how good? How long will it be designed to take to create a full set of the best high end group armor?
<[Merloc]> The group armor will start off with archtype armor that is slightly better than top end TBS group armor. The armor can be upgraded to a class specific version at the next tier of group content, and then upgraded a second time at the final tier of group content. The final tier upgrade will have 4 elemental variations, and a 5th variation that is a combination of the 4 elements.
<[Merloc]> The final level of group items for the expansion will be over 500hp/mana, and will have all of the new stats and mods we are adding into the expansion.


<[QT]Destinova> *Swampfunk* Can we find out more about the Heroic items? How many items will have heroic stats? What are some of these bonuses I keep hearing about?
<[QT]Destinova> *Swampfunk* When will the next patch be? I hear it might include merloc's newest item changes.
<[Merloc]> The next patch will be on Thursday, October 25th, and significant changes to many rogue usable 1HP weapons from TSS and TBS group and raid content will be going in... Depending on how parsing goes, there may also be significant changes to 2H weapon ratios in the same patch.

<[QT]Destinova> *Swampfunk* Can we find out more about the Heroic items? How many items will have heroic stats? What are some of these bonuses I keep hearing about?
<[Maddoc]> Heroic stats will exist on many items, both on the raid-attainable level and the group-attainable level. Some of the bonuses you can expect to see are modifications to your avoidance skills, additional damage for melee and ranged combat, and of course additional bonuses to health, mana, and endurance.

<[QT]Destinova> *Swampfunk* Recently there were some changes to battle leap, could Nodyin Explain those please?
<[Nodyin]> The current Battle Leap suffers from a simple problem. You can over or under-shoot your target and "waste" your combat buff. I'm changing the AA to be more reliable and leap you directly to your target. There were those in Beta that were upset about losing the ability to jump forward for fun so I created a very low cost, just for fun AA that just lets you jump forward without any other buff.

<[QT]Destinova> -18:06:09- *Armarant* Will the retail version of SoF get the Gnomeish Steamfists?
<[Rashere]> As far as I know, those are only available via a pre-order of the digital version.

<[QT]Destinova> *Bingy* what is the movement rate of the Steamfists?
<[Rashere]> They're about jboots speed.

<[QT]Destinova> *Uliadyen* What can we expect from the raid content in Secrets of Faydwer?
<[Merloc]> There are 4 tiers of raid content with increasing difficulty, the first two are slightly above TSS, and TBS raid content, with the final two tiers being significant increases over those levels of difficulty. I'm not sure of the exact number, but I believe there are 3 times as many events in SoF as there were in TBS.
<[Rashere]> 28 raids total
<[Merloc]> As for the events themselves, they are following the EQ tradition of increasingly more complex and interesting raid events.

<[QT]Destinova> *Nolrog* Would it be possible to add a bag-to-token NPC into Crescent Reach?
<[Ngreth]> We will consider this. From a quick survey it sounds like a yes, but if we decide positively to do this it will not happen until after SoF.

<[QT]Destinova> *Nolrog* Not sure if this has ever been brought up but the Now "Planar Fruit Pie" that just to be Justice fruit pies need to have the primary ingredent added to forage tables in places other then PoJ. when they were Justice fruit pies it made sense that the fruit only droped there but since they are now Planar they should drop from any of the PoP zones.
<[Ngreth]> It is something I might consider, but it is something I would put very low on the priority list so it would be long time until it happens if I decide to do it.

<[QT]Destinova> *Lowjak* will the debuff limits for raid mobs be increased beyond the 50 slot limit?
<[Merloc]> This is something we are currently looking into, but there are code limitations and design considerations we need to discuss first.

<[QT]Destinova> *Nolrog* It would certainly be nice if the new tradeskill drops had at least a minimal vendor sale value. With no value, everything will need to be farmed or Bazaar bought.
<[Ngreth]> We will continue to evaluate this, but at this time we want it to be a solely player market.

<[QT]Destinova> *Nolrog* Can you please consider moving the Freeport human ore vendor? Cultural forge in east, ore vendor currently in west.
<[Ngreth]> It is something I can consider. Please post a suggestion of a specific NPC on the forums. I plan to address all of the cultural merchants after SoF goes live, and look at where I can make it more convenient. Some people have to go to other zones to get parts...

<[QT]Destinova> *Armarant* are there any quests added to the revamped steamfont with the revamp that are equivilant to the quests added to lavastorm?
<[Rashere]> The revamped steamfont is all the original content. What we've added is a live event that will be starting in early November to kick off the expansion. It includes a number of events and quests that take place in the days leading up to expansion launch.

<[QT]Destinova> *Croix_FV* It's been admitted that knight weapon ratios have been held back due to Paladin "Slay Undead. Can knights expect a dmg softcap for slay similar to proposed DMG softcaps to Backstab, so that knight weaponry can avoid being limited by an ability only available to HALF of the knights?
<[QT]Destinova> *Diet_Canada* will there be another lon weekend? to be honest last one was during halo so was getting owned by 12 year olds on xbox live that week.
<[Merloc]> Moving the slay undead damage off of weapon ratios has been mentioned before, and is something I'm considering right now... although personally, it's not a sifnificant factor for me when I tune 2h weapon ratios.

<[QT]Destinova> *Diet_Canada* will there be another lon weekend? to be honest last one was during halo so was getting owned by 12 year olds on xbox live that week.
<[Rashere]> There's actually one coming up soon. The first promo weekend was a big hit and it's something we're planning to do relatively frequently.

<[QT]Destinova> *Sauruman* Any plans to revisit booster pack drop rates? Several thousand kills of blue + in last weeks and none dropped. On Saryrn, its rare to see them go below 200k plat
<[Rashere]> We did a lot of monitoring of the drop rates of the LoN items and have made several adjustments upwards. At this point, the cards are entering the world at the rate we expect and apart from special events like the LoN promo weekends, I'm not anticipating increasing the drop rates further.

<[QT]Destinova> *FennyMT* There was mention that augments are being changed from raid drops to group drops. This is a most welcome change! What quality level can we expect from these augments? Anguish? Ayonae? BiC???
<[Merloc]> They stat level will vary based on the tier content from which they are obtained, that should include up to and beyond Anguish level.
<[Merloc]> The stat level*
<[Merloc]> There will be some special augments that will be significantly better than Anguish as well.

<[QT]Destinova> *Tulisin* Short and sweet: How do we get spells in SoF?
<[Nodyin]> Prathun and I have had a lot of discussions about how to distribute spells with this expansion.
<[Nodyin]> We looked at what worked and what didn't work quite as well in TSS and are taking our cues from that.
<[Nodyin]> There will be spells from vendors, quests and drops in this expansion and we'll be looking at how those come into the world to try to make the process as fair and fun as possible.

<[QT]Destinova> *morrick* Wizard dps is getting far beyond Magician capabilities ad the copy paste upgrades the mages have been getting are focing magicians out of the raid scene. Currently most high end guilds have 1 slot open for a magician due to there lacklucter abilities, low dps vs wizards and necros, low survivability and now lowered utility usage. What actions are being done to prevent raiding maxes from going extinct and are we havin
<[Merloc]> Prathun isn't here, but we are aware of problem with Magician DPS vs. Wizards, and I believe there are plans to address that in spellization for SoF.

<[QT]Destinova> *Ravnmoon* question for the wizard community, how come the familiars have such an outdated graphic, even on a 8800gts the spine on the familiars look like a large piece of paper
<[Rashere]> I actually plan to replace the old drake familiar model with the new drake ones in the very near future.

<[QT]Destinova> *ASPePeX* Is there a possibility to increase the dmg or lower the cast time on the necro AA Lifeburn in SoF, it became close to useless by todays mobs?
<[Rashere]> The key thing with lifeburn is that it scales with your hps and player hps are getting a significant increase with SoF so lifeburn will as well.

<[QT]Destinova> *Uliadyen* What can we expect from the tradeskills this expansion? I've heard there are several long quests involving the tradeskills, how will they compete with previous tradeskill quests?
<[Ngreth]> Tradeskills will get the normal baking we have seen the last few expansions, and a small amount of brewing. Additionally there will be a revamp to Jewelcraft, the continuation of alchemy potions to XIII (level 80), Spell research will get some consumable scrolls and all of the old spell research recipes in the systematic spell system.
<[Ngreth]> Additionally there is a long tradeskill quest, I estimate this quest to take 10 hours if you are extraordinarily lucky, but it is more likely to take about 20 to 30 hours to complete. It will involve all of the seven major tradeskills, and cross seven of the zones within SoF. The content is rather high level, so may require that you gain some adventurer levels in order to complete the quest.

<[QT]Destinova> *Kalomer* What are the different items the DD pre-order and the store box copy will have? It seems there is a lot of confussion as to which will have what on the boards
<[Rashere]> The store box has the in-box items (oversized card, poster, etc) and you get the worg mount and the two lon items. The digitial version also gets you the worg mount and the two lon items and you can get the steamfists as well if you pre-order it.

<[QT]Destinova> That will wrap it up for tonight. I'd like to thank the developers for coming! The log for tonight's chat will be up shortly on [url]http://eq.stratics.com/[/url]
<[QT]Destinova> Also, please feel free to join #everquest for open chat.

<[Zatozia]> Take care everyone. Thank you for joining us!
<[Elidroth]> Thanks all..
<[Ngreth]> Thank you for attending! Have a great adventure!
<[Nodyin]> Good night!
<[Merloc]> Thanks for coming guys, see you next time.
<[Maddoc]> Thanks for joining us.

Thanks Noken!!

Thanks :)