There have been some updates to the Advanced Shard Armor sets. Specifically, players expressed concern that it was very difficult to start upgrading to the third tier of shard armor. Although each individual piece is much better, players needed to wait until they had almost the full set in order to avoid breaking up the set bonus from the previous pieces.

Last month, Game Update 52 alleviated this problem by spreading the set bonus a bit thinner. All sets offer a bonus at 2, 3 and 5 pieces (although some of these have changed slightly as well). For certain sets, there is now a bonus at four pieces so that mixing and matching shard armor becomes a little bit easier.

Void Shard Armor: The Ultimate Reference has been updated to reflect all the changes in the set bonuses, which only affect the Advanced Shard Armor. For quick reference, here are the current set bonuses for all the Advanced Armor Sets:

Posted by Taymar on http://mmorpg-info.org.

I’ve been thinking about zombies recently as one of the most amazing videos ever has been seeing a lot of playtime:

YouTube - Michael Jackson - Thriller

For those of us without the musical talent and dancing skills of Michael Jackson, zombies present somewhat more of a problem. I always aim to be prepared for emergencies and so I have come to eat your brains collected this set of weblinks to help you be prepared for the day when the zombies arrive. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://mmorpg-info.org.

Player-written books have come to Norrath! I’ve already filled a shelf in our guild hall with books for everyone: an address book for our guild members, a copy of Harvesting by Tier, collection references and a few short stories set in Norrath. Writing your own bestseller is easy: you simply need to choose a design and then fill the pages with your prose.

There are two book recipes per tier, one handcrafted book using the standard pelt and one mastercrafted book using the rare pelt of that tier. The mastercrafted books have a clasped design.

These books are crafted by sages with level 50 or higher. Sages learn these recipes via a quest on the Isle of Mara. You will need to have basic Far Seas Trader faction to do the quest. You can gain this needed by speaking to Captain Ingrid at the docks and completing her initial quest.

Books come in two orientations which alternate up the tiers. Tier 1, tier 3 and the rest of the odd-numbered tiers sit flat while tier 2, tier 4 and the other even-numbered tiers stand upright. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://mmorpg-info.org.

It’s confirmed! The mushroom rings will be appearing on live servers for the first time on Saturday, June 20th and then continue to appear each month for at least 24 hours but no more than 48.

Here is a quick summary of information based on discussions on the forums with DominoDev.

On the 20th of each month, magical mushroom rings will appear in secluded woods around Norrath, tempting adventurers and tradeskillers into hidden instances.

The rings are all placed in relatively safe forested areas (which is why there are no rings in the Commonlands nor Gorowyn):

• Archer’s Wood in Antonica
• East of D’Abth Bridge in Nektulos Forest
• West of the Spires in Enchanted Lands
• Nerian Highlands in Darklight Wood
• In front of the Nursery in Greater Faydark

The mushroom rings lead to small, temporary instances which scale to your level. The instances are a simple type of mission which reward elemental tokens which can be used to purchase house furniture. You can collect up to six tokens per month (there are two quests in the Darklight Woods instance). The tokens are heirloom so you can trade them between characters on a single account.

These instances also include special purple shiny collections. There is only a single question mark in an instance, so it may take some months to complete these collections.

DominoDev posted yesterday confirming the Moonlight Enchantments mini live event

Last month folks on Test server noticed the appearance of some mysterious mushroom rings in various forested areas of Norrath.

These rings are only visible when the phase of the moon is right … which appears to correspond to the 20th of every Earth month (PST time zone).

Those who wish to investigate where the mushroom rings may take them should therefore keep their eyes open this weekend, and around the 20th of each month in the future!

We hope this regularly occurring little mini event will give you something to look forward to each month. And if you happen to miss it one month, it’s not long till the next time the rings appear! :D

Posted by Taymar on http://mmorpg-info.org.

Game Update 52, Might and Magic, has come to Norrath. Kiara has posted the Game Update Notes which offer plenty of detail. Before you disappear into the depths of Kunark to explore the new quest lines, however, you should pop by your home village to find out about getting upgrades to your abilities from the new Research Assistant you will find there.

Research Assistants have come to Norrath to help adventurers upgrade their abilities. When you interact with a Research Assistant, he or she will offer you a list of the spells and combat arts which can be upgraded, along with a timeline of how long it will take to research the upgrade. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://mmorpg-info.org.

Pac Man, , Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Advance Wars, Metal Gear, Pokemon, Sonic, Doom … and I haven’t even started yet!

How many game references can you spot?

Click on the image for a full-size version.

(via wonderlandblog)

Posted by Taymar on http://mmorpg-info.org.

Great news: Dragonica is ready for launch. We played the game in the closed beta and had a great time with it and now you can too.

The European launch is on the 10th of June, 2009 and you can download the software from the Dragonica site on gPotato. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://mmorpg-info.org.

Have you got a stack of shiny Void Shards? Are you wondering what to do with them? Give them to me! Oh well, I guess that won’t work. In that case, you should be looking through all of our handy guides for the Void Shard rewards so that you can work out exactly what you want to spend them on. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://mmorpg-info.org.

So Paxmar has been doing a roaring trade selling harvests and collectables – why have I never sold these on the broker before? I try to keep Paxmar totally self-sufficient and she’s probably my richest alt.

I started thinking about, well, what do I spend the money on? I mean, she doesn’t need armor, she doesn’t need spells – she barely uses food and drink. So in the end I started buying up missing bits from collections. I only bought items from collections she had already started and I stayed within her tier range. It seems silly to complete a level 50 collection on a level 30 toon. Also I strongly suspect I’ll be really hurting for ways to get experience at higher levels and then all the lovely collections that I could have used will be gone. But Paxmar had a fair share of low level collections that she wanted to complete and that was a pretty straight forward decision.

Meanwhile, Paxmar decided it was high time she found religion. It’s surprisingly difficult to find a set of Deity quests that do not involve killing! Here are her experiences so far. [More...]

Posted by Taymar on http://mmorpg-info.org.

The Shadow Odyssey missions have Void Shards as rewards which can be used to upgrade your gear, including jewelry. The Basic Void Shard Jewelry is much more affordable but if you are looking to dress your character in the best, you should be looking at the infused sets. But most of them are wearable by all so it is not as simple a decision as it is to pick out your other pieces.

The webgnome has come to the rescue and we have all of the jewelry laid out for you by set.

Shard Infused Jewelry

There are 24 sets of three pieces, where each piece costs 13 Void Shards to craft. Unlike Greater Shard Armor, the infused jewelry does not require you to purchase basic jewelry. Infused jewelry pieces are stand-alone and each type has three pieces which comprises the set. Each set has two bonuses: one for wearing two pieces and another for wearing three.

The recipes for infused jewelry can be found in Far Seas Strategic Pricing Manual Volume 3. Crafters should read Far Seas Tradeskill Missions and Faction for more information about gaining this recipe book. The jewelry items can be inspected at a mysterious Quellthulian Infused Shard Jewelry Merchant at 1678,452,895 at the Dropship Landing area of the Moors of Ykesha. If you purchase the items from the Merchant, it will cost you an additional two shards per piece (so don’t!).

The full listing of the Infused Void Shard Jewelry, by set, can be found as a table with class filters in our reference section.

Posted by Taymar on http://mmorpg-info.org.