Sleeper's Tomb

UPDATE: The Sleeper’s Tomb, which opens next Tuesday, offers two variations:
:::Sleeper’s Tomb: The Awakening (group)
:::Sleeper’s Tomb: A Temporal Leap (raid)
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::Holly “Windstalker” Longdale has posted a news update about when we can expect Sleeper’s Tomb, and the first wave of Contested Avatars.
::Good day intrepid adventurers! Next Tuesday we are bringing you a big update that we lovingly call “Sleeper’s Tomb.” This is the first chapter of our expansion, Chains of Eternity, releasing in November. We have some additional content releasing with Sleeper’s Tomb that is definitely worth getting ready for! Check this out:
==Sleeper’s Tomb, Chapter 1 Begins!==
::Norrathian’s will find Jorlak, an aged Dracurion chronomage, outside of the Sleeper’s Tomb in Velious’ Eastern Wastes. He will launch a quest that gives adventurers access to world-changing events in Norrath’s history, including the rituals of the heralded warders who kept the great prismatic dragon, Kerafyrm, asleep for many ages.
==Start Your Chains of Eternity Adventure==
::Level 92 players should be on the lookout for a message from Erus Dal’viv, the Swordbearer. He has a mission for adventurers that will help the Duality’s research into the Age’s End Prophecy… a mission that could take an unexpected turn.
==Avatars of War Appear!==
::The defeat of Rallos Zek has ascended the demi-gods of War to full godhood. They will appear in the lands of Velious ready to take on any who challenge them. These Avatars – now known as the Hounds of War – will take on any and all who dare confront them as they choose to appear in Eastern Wastes, Withered Lands, or Great Divide.
==Ride Dragonkin across the Skies! Or Decorate with One!==
::New wyvern mounts are available through the new Sleeper’s Tomb content released on Live servers for those who have the Velious expansion. Or you can buy a wyvern mount of your own from the Marketplace. And if flying isn’t your speed, you can decorate your house with a wyvern plushie from the Marketplace. Each Beastie Box gives you a random color of wyvern when it’s opened. Collect all five colors!
Sleeper’s Tomb will launch in both group and raid versions Tuesday. September 18 after exactly one week of public testing. Will it be enough? We will breathe a sigh of relief if the zones are bug-free and itemization makes sense.
This month will see the introduction of the Sleeper’s Tomb group and x4 raid zones. So when can players test these zones? Now!
Some astute players noticed late last week that the EQ2 Beta server was accessible from the Launchpad. We received confirmation last week that the Test Copy server was morphing into the Beta server. That’s great, but there was no clarification or announcement of whether anything was ready to be tested. Until today…
==Where is the Sleeper’s Tomb?==
The Sleeper’s Tomb portal stands on the edge of the Pit of Awakened which can be found in roughly the center of the Eastern Wastes at " /way -101, -268, 2961 ". The quickest way to travel there is FROM THE GUILD HALL take the Wizard Spire to Eastern Wastes. You can then fly southwest or travel on foot to the Pit of Awakened at /waypoint -101, -268, 2961 and speak to the Chronomancer there.
GUILD HALL > WIZARD SPIRE > EASTERN WASTES > FLY/WALK > /WAY -101, -268, 2961
The portal offers two choices — Group and Raid.
==How Do I Get to Beta?==
At least for now, there does not seem to be a separate Beta launcher. Start your EverQuest II launcher as you normally would, then click on “Version” in the upper left corner of the Launchpad window. In the Select Game Version tab that appears, select “Beta” from the list and click the Apply button. The Launchpad will now start downloading the ~14GB of data for a full install of EQ2.
After a couple of minutes, you’ll want to click “Open Game Directory” in the launcher, and then exit out of the program. Now you should be inside your main EverQuest II install folder. Select the “paks” and “music” folders. Then press Ctrl-C to copy. Open the newly created “BetaServer” folder inside your EQ2 install folder and press Ctrl-V to Paste. Once this copy is complete, you should be able to restart the EQ2 Launchpad and only need to download about 20-30 minutes of data before you are able to login to the Beta.
NOTE: If EQ2 Beta crashes immediately after launching, go to your main EQ2 directory and copy the D3DCompiler_43.dll and D3DX9_43.dll files to your BetaServer folder.
==What about Beta Copies?==
We confirmed that Beta copies were working shortly after we saw this note from Bunji:
::The /beta command should be working now (which queues up your character to be copied). I believe the copy script for it is running about once every hour.
Where are the Beta Signups? What About NDA?
There is no Beta signup, at least at this point. It seems everyone can see the Beta server on their Launcher whether they have signed past NDAs and been accepted to previous Betas or not.
==Commentary==
Again, let’s not shoot the messengers here. Gninja and Bunji are content creators. They are just trying to be helpful. It is up to the Community Manager to be aware of what content is in the pipeline, what state of testing it is currently in, and to manage the expectations of players. And it is up to the Producer(s) to communicate to the players where we are in the lifecycle of different content and how we can get involved. The moment Sleeper’s Tomb was available for testing, there should have been an announcement.
==Initial Release==
As was hinted last month, players will see new raid content in the month of September, specifically the Sleeper’s Tomb. It’s our understanding that the difficulty of this zone will stop short of the Plane of War. Meanwhile, there have been sightings of new ETHEREAL Charms over the long weekend. The charms have augmented the ETHEREAL weapons which first appeared in August. Remember folks, Ethereal items have an equal chance of dropping from any enemy — they do not have a higher chance of dropping from named encounters.
*** Stay tuned. We’ll be posting more soon! ***