The Spirit Realm

Here's some info about the new expansion that's based on concrete facts, not rumours but stuff taken directly from strings file. Note: nothing in here is against any NDA, as the new expansion doesn't even exist yet...

* New currencies - gold and silver tokens of Brell's favor.
* New equipment file: undequip.eqg
* New ranks of Shaman AAs: Ancestral Aid, Union of Spirits, Rabid Bear (and Feral Bite), Spirit Call and Languid Bite.
* New shaman AAs (went in today):
-- Group Shrink
-- Group Spirit Walk
-- Inconspicuous Totem ("You become an inconspicuous totem"/ "soandso is a totem." / "Your illusion fades")
-- Extended Pestilence ("You feel empowered")

The latter is a focus effect of some sort which currently has Limit: Instant Spells Only on it. Quite odd as it uses SPA 287, which extends spells by a set number of ticks!

The totem one is... well, it's damned hard without any parsers but it uses the following effects:
Slot1: Fading Memories
Slot2: Mesmerize
Slot3: Illusion
Slot4: Player Size Modification

If I didn't know better, I'd say it's , plus an illusion and shrink. Actually, I don't know any better!

There are lots of new focus effects: 5-60% up to 20%-60% for groupers, 5-90% to 20-90% for raiders. Note that these are L85 effects. There are copies of certain L85 spells, but absolutley nothing yet pointing to a level cap raise spellwise.

Note: This info comes from spells_us.txt, dbstr_us.txt and certain other files.

your information is from Test server patches?

That Fading Memories is the actual Fading Memories and not the bene-only dispel that Lucy calls Fading Memories, right?

Looks like a "loose aggro" + illusion component "look like some totem" ?

The pestilence part could be for poison DDs, adding some tics of a dot.

This is all speculation of course.

mmmm, anyone thinking underfoot, and jumping down into the hole to get to the next expansion?

I should moderate your post for overuse of the letter Z

All of that info sounds great. I hope all of that makes it through and AA costs aren't too inflated this expansion.

Some of these things sound really cool...

I am excited about a possible Underfoot themed expansion... and I am in the boat of hoping for no level increase this time around. I am still working on catching up both of my toons, and I don't think there needs to be more levels... AAs sure, but leave the levels alone for a bit longer...

When they shifted to yearly expansions, it was said that yearly level increases would go with them.

I love how fast this thread devolved to speculation. Good idea though!

If they're going to make an entire expansion under the ground, I sure hope they make an indoor version of SoE or mark a few of them as outdoor... Techincally, the Hole should be outdoor I guess :p

More news from today's Beta patch - Merloc is no longer the items dev. In practice he's not been around in ages, but the spells file has changed from having item placeholders labelled:

KTURKOWSKI Reserved^
(IE Merloc's real name)

They've now been replaced by:
DCRONKHITE Reserved^

That's Douglas Chronkhite, otherwise known as Elidroth - the new item dev!

LOL.. but no.

I just took some spell ID's Keith had reserved. Nothing more to it than that. I'm not making items.

Oh.. and it's Cronkhite.

It's too late now, you've been declared the item dev, now you've gota put up with all the hate messages and griefing ! MUWHAHAHA!!

*cackles gleefully*

Do we still not have the Warrior icon installed? I could have sworn Sabby posted it...

right, he and Aristo last I heard, splitting that job

I bet they add multiple mercs as part of the next expansion to keep the bean counters happy and keep us all paying customers. i.e. can purchase multiple mercs and pop whatever merc the situation needs

Isn't run 8 only 65% run speed since ranks 1-5 give 10% a rank and 6-8 give 5%?

As far as I remember, SOE later was pretty unhappy with the RS increase, which you can feel when you compare later expansion mob speeds with luclin etc.
They even said there won't be any more increases in RS, if I remember right.

There will NOT be a level increase. Confirmed. Personally, I think this is a mistake.

There will be 3-4 spells per class-----'very powerful', as quoted from one Developer at Fan Faire.

Developers are aware that Shaman need help with DPS, and will be instituting a substantial improvement for Shaman.

Not sure I necessarily agree with this, nor do I believe they will implement such a change that makes sense-----many great ideas outlined on the various forums on these Boards.

This information comes from a person who was at Fan Faire, worked with Devs on some of the new Events, and was present during the various forums. Its quite accurate, although lacking in detail.

Well there is not going to be anymore lvls in the new expansion. As far as i can see there are going to be some more aa's but some of them we may not get intil after the expansion goes live.

As I said---it was confirmed at Fan Faire by the Developers own words. There will be some attention to Shaman DPS.
Far as the veracity of the source---its unassailable in my view.

Whether that translates to some quoted Board or 'web cast' is another issue, and likewise, whether they actually live up to this verbal promise is unknown.

But I assure you, this is what they said.

Thanks Rommuluss, that leaves place for hope
Was a little depressed when founding that statement on the soe-board.

Do any or all of the new expansion AA's require a certain level to obtain them and if so what levels are required?

Would like to see some AA's that are more of a General Class AA (requiring no specific level) to benefit newer and slower playing characters to have some additional benefit from them.

Also is there any hint of a free month of play, like last year to get players back with this new expansion?

Two new spells on Beta as of today:

* Healing Counterbias
A two=part spell - slows the mob and gives a big HoT to your target's target. (IE cast on a mob and it'll heal the tank)

* Spreading Malo
Viral Malo.

The first is interesting - the raw numbers are 70% (rank1), 75% (rank2) and 80% (rank3) for the slow and it uses the Lassitude style slow effect (SPA 371) rather than regular slow (SPA 11). It's in a different slot to Lassitude too, so hopefully you'll still get the Lassitude HoT component firing.

The second? Meh, I've used the viral slow once or twice to farm greens, but aside from that it's a quick way to die in current zones. I'd imagine viral Malo would be the same!

Hmm don't reall see what a viral slow will do that a Totem will not.

Well, here's my understanding of the way agro works with the viral slow. Bear in mind I'm not 100% sure, but it's the understanding that I have of it from my own experiences.

Let's say you have 20 mobs all grouped together. Let's also assume that when the spell lands, it applies 1 agro.
You cast a standard AE, it'll apply the agro to all mobs in the radius once. So you have 1 agro on 20 mobs.
If you drop a totem, it'll apply the agro to all twenty mobs once a tic, as long as the mobs are in the radius of the totem or the totem poofs. If the totem lasts a minute, that's 10 ticks. So in the end you'll have 10 agro on all 20 mobs.
Now lets say you have a viral spell, and the mobs are close enough together that it spreads to all of them on the first tick when it spreads. So on the first tick, you'll have 1 agro on all 20 mobs. Now the second tick. If all the mobs are still close enough together, one mob will spread it again to the 19 other mobs, so that's 19 more agro you'll get. If all the mobs are close enough together, all of them will spread it to the others, so you'll be getting 19 agro from each of the 20 mobs. So on the first tick, you'll have 1 agro on each mob. On the second tick, you'll have 20 agro, on each mob (just on the second tick, that's twice as much agro as was applied to the mobs via the totem). On the third tick, you'll have 39 agro, on all 20 mobs. 58 on the fourth tick, 77 on the fifth, and so on.
Now take into account that slow is a hell of a lot more than 1 agro, and that if you have a detrimental duration extension focus, as long as the mobs are kept close together, the slow will never fully run out and keep spreading, grabbing you more and more agro.

Now, I'm not 100% sure this is exactly how agro on the viral slow works. But it would definately explain why after the slow's been spreading around a bit, all the mobs will be glued to the shaman and no tank in the world can peel them off (short of a successful taunt, which only peels the mob off until the next tick, and it's right back on the shaman). It's because of this that the viral slow is used only for farming greenies and has no practical applications in current content, pretty much maintaining it's spot in the back of the spellbook. A Viral Malo might not be as much agro, but still circumstantial enough that it'd be right there in the back next to Hungry Plague.

So please, seriously. Just give us an Echo-of-Tashan-style AE Malo.