The Serpent's Spine Preview
Everquest is ready to launch its 12th expansion on September 19th along with many other large scale changes to gameplay that coincide with the release of one of the largest projects to date.

Features
* New Player Race: The Drakkin have been created from both human and dragon blood to protect the future of all dragon kind. Several colors and customizations will be available to make each Drakkin character unique, such as elegant scale markings and horns.
* Level Cap Increase: Players can now reach level 75, complete with new spells, abilities, raids and quests for greater power.
* Content for Levels 1 to 75: Play through every level of the game without ever leaving the Serpent Spine Mountains.
* New Starting City: Crescent Reach is a fully functioning city with all that is required to learn and thrive in EverQuest, including merchant, quest, combat and tradeskill areas.
* Dynamic Features: New zones, NPCs, destructible and interactive objects.
* New AAs, Spells: Experience new spells and Alternate Advancement abilities.

Drakkin!
Drakkin are humans who were given minor traits of a dragon by their parent dragons who fled the Accursed Nest to be used as weapons in a draconic war against Dyn'Leth. The Six parent dragons now reside in the old abandoned Rallosian Ogre city of Nokk that was renamed to Cresent Reach. Dyn'Leth who now resides in Ashengate, Reliquary of the Scale with a large and orchestrated army has stolen the scale of veeshan a sacred artifact to the refugee dragons of the nest. Dyn'leth believes himself to be the only one worthy of protecting the scale.

Meanwhile, on the other front Valdeholm, the final city of Krithgor are fighting their own curse that was enacted upon them by Rallos Zek for abandoning him in battle during the Rallosian invasion of Veglarson, The Earthen Badlands. Rallos Zek called upon his entire legions to follow him into Veglarson and The Krithgor betrayed him and remained behind. Their thought was if they didn't follow Rallos into battle they wouldn't risk losing. Rallos on the other hand had other ideas, and decided to hit them where it hurts.




The Parent Dragons
Shadow Dragon:

Green Dragon
White Dragon
Red Dragon
Gold Dragon
Blue Dragon

Crescent Reach
Crescent Reach home to the drakkin race located through Highpass Hold, is a fully functional city designed to make it easier for new players to ease their way into Everquest or to help returning players establish their foothold. From GM's to Spells to Abilities to Tradeskills cresent reach should suit your needs. It is possible to level from level 1 to 75 without ever leaving The Serpant's Spine expansion.





Level Cap Increase
With The Serpent's Spine you will be able to progress your character past level 70 and start your Journey to 75. The new 75 titles for Classes are as follows.
Bard - Lyricist
Beastlord - Arch Animist
Berserker - Juggernaut
Cleric - Exemplar
Druid: Stormcaller
Enchanter: Entrancer
Magician: Grand Summoner
Monk: Ashenhand
Necromancer: Deathcaller
Paladin: Holy Defender
Ranger: Huntmaster
Rogue: Shadowblade
Shadow Knight: Bloodreaver
Shaman: Spirtwatcher
Warrior: Imperator
Wizard: Arch Arcanist

New Spells
The New Spells with The Serpent's Spine will be taking on a new format. Most of the disciplines will follow suit in this format, they will be found in tiers.
Taking this naming Format:
Lesser Flame
Flame
Great Flame
and in some cases Ancient: flame
- The first tier of spells should be easily obtainable and should be tradeable.
- The second tier of spells should be obtainable by a well balanced group in content intended for that group
- The third tier of spells will be aquired through raiding
- In some rare cases there will be a fourth tier that are ancients for each class. These ancients will appear in only a select amount of raid encounters.

A new resist has been added called "Corruption". Your corruption resist will be viewable right under all your other resists. Along with the new resist, new spells have been added that cure "Corruption" based afflictions that will be critical in this expansions raid zones.

Raiding
In a different trend than current expansions, The Serpant's Spine features two progression paths for raiders and boasts two end-zones claimed to be the most challenging in the history of the game. Frostcrypt and Ashengate will prove to be an enormous challenge even for the hardiest band of raiders.

Gameplay Changes
While this is an expansion release, many gameplay changes were made during beta of The Serpent's Spine. The changes are as follows:

Con System Change
Posted by Rashere on EQLIVE:
Dark Blue Con – The concept of a dark blue con NPC has existed in EQ for a while now. It represents a range of blue con NPCs that give a bonus to their experience due to being very close to your level, generally within 5 levels. We’ve decided to change the con system to include this range as well so you can visually see when an NPC falls into this “sweet spot”.

Red > Yellow > White (even con) >Blue (new Level range) > Light Blue (Old Blue con) > Green (Old Light blue con) > Gray (Old green con)

Out of Combat Regen
When your character has been out of combat for a period of time it allows him to sit as a "resting" period. During this resting period your character can regenerate mana, health, and endurance at an advanced rate. Furthermore a new window has been added to your healthbar that has an icon. This icon will let you know what mode your character is in. A timer bar has also been added under your Endurance bar which shows you how much time you must wait before you can enter a "resting period".

Death Changes
When you meet your untimely end in Everquest now you will then "hover" over your body and not zone. A screen will pop up and prompt you to select one of two options: Accept a rez that has been casted upon you Or Zone to your bindspot. The idea behind this is you can now wait for a rez instead of having to zone twice.

Character Select Revamped
To be friendlier to newer players, The Character creation screen has been given a much needed graphical overhaul. You can now create your entire character without ever changing screens and the entire experience is much less confusing.






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