For a change lots of useful fixes in today's patch:

EverQuest Live Update - 03/15/06
--------------------------------------------

*** Headlines ***
--------------------------------------------
- EverQuest turns 7!  Starting on March 16th, join us for a month long
anniversary celebration!
- We believe we have fixed all issues related to the increased network
lag when re-forming groups in a raid.   Please let us know if you have
any further issues related to this.

*** Anniversary Events ***
--------------------------------------------
- Double experience!  To kick off the celebration, from 12:00 PM
Pacific Time on March 16th until 12:00 PM Pacific Time on March 20th
all normal experience rewards will be doubled!
- Fabled NPCs have returned! Many of your favorite NPCs from the
original EverQuest zones and Kunark have been upgraded to Fabled
versions that are tougher and tote better loot.  And for the first
time, they are joined by over a hundred NPCs from Velious!
- New scavenger hunt! NPCs in Thurgadin, Kael, and Skyshrine are
looking for help finishing up some of their collections.

*** Missions, Quests & Events ***
--------------------------------------------
- Fixed a bug in the Gilded Scroll mission that was not updating the
scrolls when they are looted.
- Five new unusual creatures have been spotted in the Demi-Plane of
Blood.
- The mini bosses in Anguish will now drop augments again.
- Made some aesthetic changes to the Snowtail and Ghost encounters in
Razorthorne.
- Tailfang in Shar Vahl will now drop his tail on the Firiona Vie
server.
- The mission The Key to the Past should now hand out an appropriate
reward.
- Reduced the difficulty of the Oroshar encounter in Arcstone.
Oroshar should now be in line with the other four spirits.
- Modified the Sundersky encounter in Arcstone.  Sundersky is now more
powerful, but becomes less so after his four summoned winds are
destroyed.
- Collapsed all of the missions on Spirit Hunter Elijo into one
mission: Mark of the Spirits.  Any previously collected spirit marks
can still be turned into Spirit Hunter Elijo for task credit.  
- Ao the Fourth Born now gives out a spell scroll reward for
completing his mission arc.  If you've previously completed all 3
Skylance Missions, then simply hail Ao for your reward.
- For the quest, Through the Portal, a fix has been made so that
crazed scyrkins will drop the needed shards.

*** AAs , Spells, and Disciplines ***
--------------------------------------------
- Temporarily removed the AA Abundant Healing.  This ability was
causing a conflict with the ability Gift of Mana.  As Gift of Mana is
generally considered the more useful of the two, Abundant Healing has
been removed until we can resolve the conflict.  Any points spent in
Abundant Healing will be refunded
- Dispel spells can no longer be blocked using buff blocking.
- Harmonic Dissonance now has a 15 minute reuse time associated with
it.
- Pets will no longer instantly die when told to attack a trap they
are not allowed to attack.  The owner will receive notification about
why the pet did not attack.
- You can now remove pet buffs even if they are stacked beyond 4.
- The buffs in the pet information window will no longer show 0 time
left in their tooltip.

*** Traps and Auras ***
--------------------------------------------
- We’ve made a change to how aura particles are displayed.  You will
now only see aura particles for auras that are owned by someone in
your group or raid.
- Most player cast auras will no longer cast their effects every spell
tick.  Instead, they will work like other spheres of influence and the
effect will remain on an affected player as long as they are within
the area of the sphere and be removed from the player only when they
leave the sphere.  Note that if you remove the effect from yourself by
clicking it off, you will need to leave the area of the aura and
return before it is reapplied.
-The cleric spells Aura of the Pious and Aura of the Zealot have been
changed slightly.  They will no longer fade after a certain amount of
damage has been taken, but will absorb slightly less damage per hit.
- Traps will now apply the correct amount of damage whether in a pvp
setting or not.
- Corrected a problem that would cause older traps to go off every
time someone entered their area instead of going off, then being
inactive for a time before going off again.
- You can now try to sense a trap even when you have a PC or NPC
targeted.  It you are targeting an object that could be trapped (such
as a chest), you will still attempt to find the trap on the object
rather than searching the area for traps.
- Using pick, disarm, or inspect while invis will no longer
automatically make you visible.
- Rain spells will no longer count interactive objects, traps, and
auras towards the max number of NPCs they can hit.
- Beneficial auras will now properly affect your group and raid
members in a pvp setting.
- The Aura window will not longer close when hitting the escape key.

*** Items ***
--------------------------------------------
- Fixed the evolving item reward for the Spirit Hunter Missions in
Arcstone.  If you have a cloak that is stuck in the second stage of
the evolving item (Cloak of the Spirit Stalker) speak to Spirit Hunter
Elijo to receive the final version.
- Modified the Black Orb of the Scrykin quest.  The orbs of the seven
dead Scrykin are now called "Gray" orbs and are tradeable.  The orbs
of the six living scrykin will also drop off the appropriate scrykin
(in addition to being the task rewards for completing Or`Sarro's
tasks)
- The Enraged Flesh Armor pieces are now no trade.
- The Prophecy of Ro tier1/2 cleric breastplate now has the activated
effect of Pious Elixir
- The Prophecy of Ro tier1/2 shaman breastplate now has the activated
effect of Ghost of Renewal
- The Prophecy of Ro tier1/2 enchanter breastplate now has the
activated effect of Ethereal Rune
- The Saga of Skin Translations are now no-trade
- The Coldain Historical Seal augmentations are now lore to each other
- Hammer of Shadows now has 300 endurance
- A number of items from the events in Theater of Blood now have their
proper stats
- Burning Tree Leaf now only returns at max 337 hp and mana and has
reduced stats.
- Pendant of Insurgency, Aelly’s Earring, Prickly Earring, and
Mary-Anne’s Ring of Insanity now have monk, beastlord, and berserker
as usable classes.

*** NPCs ***
--------------------------------------------
- Farwein Windrun has returned to his camp in South Ro.  Feel free to
stop by and welcome him back.  
- Queen Tak`Yaliz in the Desert of North Ro will no longer be missing
while you’re looking for her.
- Ping Fuzzlecutter is now carrying some tasty water!  
- Tak`Valnakor will now properly offer all of his tasks.
- Boomba the Big has returned to his old stomping grounds near the
west gate of Freeport.
- Vulak`Aerr, High Priest of Veeshan, has returned to the Temple of
Veeshan.
- Gnarlibramble has loot again.

*** Tradeskills ***
--------------------------------------------
- Changed the Stunning Bola and Explosive Bola to use the new potions.
(Basic Suspension of Pestilence IV and Basic Suspension of Flame IV
respectively)
- Increased the yield on the Treant Laminating Adhesive by adding one
more Acid Wash to the recipe.
- The trivials for the Staurolite and Prestigitase recipes have been
appropriately altered to be more in line with the result.  The
trivials were on Saurolite are now on Prestigitase, and vise versa.
- Fixed the names of the Prestidigitase items.
- Fixed the Reinforced medicine bags (normal and foldable) to take
large sized items like the medicine bag.
- The pottery task now makes the combine check on the more difficult
of the pottery wheel combine or the kiln combine.  You will still need
to complete the item (fire it) to hand into the judge.  This is to
enforce it being a test of the potter’s skill, not the potter’s
friend’s skill.
- Made the new throwing potions stack to 100 as the old ones did.
- Fixed many of the old alchemy potions that were not casting at the
proper level.
- The trophy certificates will now give the trophy exp to get it to a
percentage appropriate to your skill within the "Tier" in addition to
setting the trophy to the appropriate level.  This will not exceed 99%
though, so do not hold onto the certificate, but use it before you
gain more skill.  
- Worked Suspension of Slime potions now have the proper range of 90.
- Drop rates on the Alchemy dropped components for the new items have
been increased in most cases.
- Modified the Distillate of Skinspikes potions to be more in line
with the old Kilva's series of damage shield potions.
- Modified the Distillate of Antidote to cure multiple layers of
poison counters, as well as more counters overall (44 instead of 36).
- Modified the Distillate of Immunization to cure multiple layers of
disease counters, as well as more counters overall (44 instead of 36).
- Added some NPC’s to various zones to help consolidate some of the
alchemy herb inventory.
- Updated many of the trophy tasks to remove items that were too rare
and items that were only in zones that required keys.  Ngreth is open
to further debate on additional items and items he may have missed.
Please feel free to post about it on the forums.
- The composite treant bows have been altered.  Those that had the
"calmed" versions will get a version similar to the bows they had, but
it will have gained a slot 7 augments slot, in addition to the slot 4
it already had.  The calmed compound version has had a slight
adjustment DOWN in the stats, but slight increase in the damage and
range.  The rest of the calmed versions got an increase to their
overall stats, though there may be some shuffle.  Those that had the
version of the bow with the proc will get a significant upgrade to
their bow, but these bows no longer have an innate proc.  Instead they
have a slot 4 and a slot 7, and the players will be able to choose to
add a proc via slot 4, or not.  These bows have also changed to
attunable.  The recipes to make the bows have changed, and the in game
book includes the changes.
- Altered the recipe for the Grandmaster's Medicine bag.  Please see
Jolum for the new requirement.

*** Zones ***
--------------------------------------------
- Veeshan's Peak should now be in the appropriate state.
- Guild lobby fog issues should be resolved now.
- You should be able to bind in North and South Ro again.

*** General ***
--------------------------------------------
- Windows Sticky Keys functionality on Windows 98 and ME is fixed.
- The Auto-Bank feature now works for everyone.
- Procs and clickable items will no longer cause spell gems to refresh
randomly.
- You can now open up to 34 bags at once.
- Autofire will properly turn off when a destructible object is
destroyed.
- The Defense of Thurgadin. Dwarves at Base Camp will now be more
focused on recovery than combat and will be less effective in battle.
They will refocus on Combat when they move away from basecamp
- The Defense of Thurgadin. The Giant Captains will now strengthen
their soldiers that are nearby in combat.
- The Defense of Thurgadin. Added additional failsafes to prevent the
Kromzek General from failing to leave a corpse


*** Special Notes ***
--------------------------------------------
- We have made really good progress on the reported issues of
increased zoning times.  We would like to thank all those that have
helped with this by providing detailed information.  We know what the
issues are and we are in the process of implementing our solution.  We
hope to have a fix that can be tested on our Test Server within the
next week or so.
- Just in the last couple of days we were able to find the line of
sight issue that some of you have been reporting.  Given how close we
were to our next live update, we felt that there was not a sufficient
amount of time to properly test this change.  For this reason the line
of sight fix will not be in this update, but will go to our Test
Server this week so that we can have the proper amount of testing time
to ensure that our fix actually fixes the problem and does not create
any others.  Thank you for your understanding.

-- The EverQuest Team