Throughout the week, Merloc receives questions from various places and answers as many as he can. He wanted to start sharing some of his answers with everyone else so that he wouldn't have to repeat himself.

Here's the third edition of Q & A from Merloc's Tower.

Q: I am guessing that Glowing Earring of Purified Ice is missing a heal focus, because I can't work out why else this would be a healing class only earring.

A: Focus effects are applied to items after the class breakdown is decided; focus effects are then allocated and assigned to items. Usually there are more items than focus effects, so not every item will have a focus effect in an item set.

Q: I was wondering if there is any specific reasoning as to why the focus effect was removed from the DoDh paladin class item when as far as I have seen so far no other class had their focus changed or removed. while the focus is not one that will be particularly missed, it focuses a spell which even before an upgrade was made for it was very rarely used, I am disappointed that our class item is now the only Depths class item which is lacking some form of spell focus. It's still an item that many paladins cannot replace due to Echo of Anger not existing on ANY other usable items.

A: The focus effect on Valorium Belt of Devotion was mistakenly removed in a previous patch. I've restored it to the item and corrected the description on the Final Reckoning focus effect to indicate it is 25% mana preservation on Last Rites.

Q: Is it possible to put the light source effect back on the Ton Po summons?

A: The light source effect was removed from thrown weapons due to issues with the excessive lighting that is caused when multiple effects stack up in one area. We most likely won't be adding light source effects back on to thrown items.

Q: I would just like to say that the drop rate of some items on Ayonae Ro in Deathknell is totally off: we have killed this mob loads of times, but to this date only ONE Symbol of Pianissimo.

A: Symbol of Pianissimo has a 25% drop rate, sounds like a bit of bad luck.

Q: Is Kellak the Serpent Lord supposed to drop ENC/NEC/MAGE/WIZ gear?

A: Kellak does not drop an item specifically for silk armor classes; he does drop Electrified Bauble of Rigor which is an All/All item.

Q: Are the values displayed for backstab supposed to be omitting elemental damage? Prior to the patch you could have a weapon with say 25 +2 poison and it would have a chance to backstab as if it were a 27 damage weapon supposing the poison was not resisted. Post patch the same weapon would simply display as having 25 backstab damage.

A: The +2 poison is still added, the backstab damage replaces only the "damage" value on the weapon, when performing the backstab calculation. Currently, backstab damage is identical to normal damage for all weapons, but my plan is to upgrade rogue useable piercers from TSS onward.

Q: I realize that only about 90% of Solteris loot has been found so far so my information is incomplete, but it seems like there is a serious lack of Improved Dodge 5 items available for Knights.

A: In the last patch I added a lot of spell effects to Solteris items, there should be 4 items with Improved Dodge V that are usable by Paladins.

Q: Cragnarl in Atiiki doesn't drop any loot. I think this is a mistake.

A: There was a treasure table incorrectly attached in Atiiki; I've changed it so that Cragnarl will drop loot now. The changes should go out relatively soon.

Keith "Merloc" Turkowski
EQ Designer - Items