When in the timeline did the racial/deity armor-smithing went in.

I seem to recall that velium blocks were needed for sheets. (For example the Troll/Ogre Cazic Thule deity SKs I recall could wear Fulvous Plate).


Any old school smiths recall if this was implemented in the Velious expansion? This was actually fairly decent plate that could be obtained by folks that did not have the time available for heavy raiding.

Hm. I am not a tradeskiller, but I distinctly recall my guild having a racial armor smithing night once. This had to have been beginning to mid 2002 at the latest. However, SoL came out in December of 2001.

Might have to google for some patch notes...

Found post via Google of a person mentioning making cultural armor in October 2001. So seems cultural was indeed out prior to SoL.

http://www.austen.350.com/emerald_rings/T-skills.html

there was definitely cultural armor before sol, but it wasnt till sol that the tae wue (sp?) and the uber plates came out , ie firece heraldic helandic etc ...

in fact i remember the ever so rare terrorantula dropping silk needed for some erudite cultural

The racial armors came in with SoV, as I remember. I have not been able to pin down an actual implementation date, however.

The imbued jewelry also came in with SoV, I believe.

Does that meen the ground spawned evergreen leaves where in the faydark from SoV release or patched in later on?

Evergreen leaves are probably vanilla, they're used to make green dyes for Fine Plate smithed armor. Yes, there were armor dyes before LoY, just very limited

edit - plate, not steel (smithed only for shawl)

So you mean if you were to come across one of these limited dyes then you could actually dye your armor? Or did it only work on the smithed armor?

you used the dye alongside the fine steel armor recipe to make the fine steel armor colorful (it was AC only)

I believe the process was actually a combine that required the proper tradeskill level. In turn, this only applied to special tradeskill recipies, this excludes any other droppable gear that cannot be used in tradeskills.

I did not know that. So a player could actually make themselves a little costum so to speak. Pretty neat ima have to try n get my hands on some different colored fine steel stuff for when im buying/selling or just hangin around.

Shmoozo's Sewing Kits FAQ at EQTraders provides some insight here:



I am fairly certain that not all cultural armors went in at the same time. I distinctly remember reading in an armor crafting guide back prior to Velious that elven smiths had an advantage over other races because elven chain mail armor filled in some gaps in the skill progression that other races did not have access to.

Also, Shmoozo's FAQ had the following entry:



I am guessing that Sept. 19, 2000 is when the introduction of cultural armors began. I'll just copy and paste the relevant portion of the patch notes from Allakhazam. Notice that it mentions it will be an ongoing process:

Yes , i had a full suit or 2 of Dyed whatever colors i wanted. My wifes cleric made them i remember , I remember it taking alot of time to get the materials to make full suits for us. Just Ac was on them but it was real high ac for the time. It was more to be unique. But i do remember she could only make certain religions or somethings. I know she couldn't make ogre armor on her human cleric. I believe only human armor and certain religions had sets of armor. The old EQ traders should have the info or somewhere.

That all / all plate armor that rarely dropped off the posky boss. is what i really wanted )

I remember this as well. I recall the gnome cultural armor recipes being the last ones to be made to function correctly.

The Erudite recipes must have gone in before SoL, because I remember farming the Terrorantula silks with guild mates.

If the cultural is in, only a few can really use it at release since a lot of the chain/plate ones need velium rings, which obviously takes velium. Some of them don't... I won't elaborate, but I will be the first player with a full set of Imbued cultural

The biggest question is, will there be any features in the client we will be playing that aren't part of the actual CD-Roms we use to load the game? My understanding is that there would be no patcher or file distribution beyond what is provided in the retail copy of the game.

Armor dyes were incredibly overrated, the tints were very light making it pretty hard to discern the colors at a distance. I remember farming the materials to turn my suit of Fine Plate red, then paying someone to dye them for me, and was heavily disappointed when I got the items back. For instance, if you wanted to dye them blue, imagine Mithril Armor but with 25% of the tint.

I know nothing about the cultural crafted armors though I didn't do much of any crafting (besides Banded armor and other minor things) till LDoN, and then it was just Gothic Steel and I quit. I did sport a suit of Imbued Cabilis Scale when that recipe was first implemented, but it was just for racial pride!

I think people are talking about different types of cultural armor. There were decent pieces that High Elves, Ogres, Dwarves and possible others could make that came out during velious. There were also leather tailoring cultural combines for Halflings and maybe Wood Elves, etc.

However the really good plate armor that was race/deity specific had recommended levels on it, and therefore is definitely not pre-luclin.

It will all have to be released with the client in one package, because they can't patch things or send out other compilations of EQ. So there will be everything up through Velious in the database, but you will need materials you can't get in classic to make these things - like velium, obviously. I don't foresee it being a problem if they package it all together up through the end of Velious since you need items from Kunark to make Kunark-released recipes, and Velious items to make Velious-released recipes.

I want my black pantherskin armor!


No seriously I do

Haha. Also, the rec 45 armors WERE in Velious and the plate required velium sheets. I think the recommended 45 tag was added in Luclin+, which makes it even nicer in classic Wu's that was the stuff in classic!

I concur.

See this thread: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1609

Executive summary: all the cultural available in classic is junk. The good recipes, including the rec level 45 armor, are all Luclin or later.

That thread seems pretty inconclusive because it does not have any dates on the items, as to when they were put in. I will keep researching so we can have an objective conclusion.

Ah, healthy skepticism What proof I can find still floating out there on the internet, then:

http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/showthr ... t=cultural

A thread from EQTC in December 2002 in which "old" and "new" cultural are listed. The "old" cultural items are the mid-level imbued/enchanted pieces. The "new" cultural items are the rec 45 items, sometimes referred to as "BD (blue diamond) cultural" because blue diamonds are used in crafting the components.

Unfortunately, the EQTC archives don't go back to the date of the new cultural recipes' introduction (in fact, the post I've linked above is the oldest existing post in their general forum), but you'll notice in the thread I've linked and in several others they refer to the "new" cultural items as having gone in in May 02 (Luclin).

Cultural recipes have since been consolidated and moved on the EQTC site, but the link to the DE (to pick an example) cultural armor used to be this: http://www.eqtraders.com/secrets/recipe ... arkelf.htm

Now if we plug that into the Internet Archive, we find that the closest saved pages to the date of the introduction of new cultural are Feb 3, 2002 and June 3, 2002.

February 3: http://web.archive.org/web/200202031655 ... arkelf.htm

No rec 45 armors. DE recipes include only the mid-level imbued and enchanted adamantite armors.

June 3: http://web.archive.org/web/200206030101 ... arkelf.htm

Same as the old page, but we have a new section on Tier'Dal (unimbued) and Dark Prince (imbued) chain and plate recipes. These are the rec 45 armors for Dark Elves.

Although the patch message introducing the new cultural doesn't seem to have been archived either with the searchable patch history or at Allakhazam, this patch http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20020605a.html from June of 02 refers to a change made to certain "new" cultural items:

"# Changed several of the new cultural chain skirts from Leg slot to Waist slot."

Now take a look at a smattering of the rec 45 pieces on Allakhazam's and their earliest comment dates:

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=12695
Dragonkin Heraldic BP - June 21st, 2002

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=12086
Dark Prince Regent BP - May 31st, 2002

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=13530
Dark Prince Sovereign BP - July 19th, 2002

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=12710
Fulvous Steelweave BP - June 24th, 2002

Compare to a few of the old cultural items:

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=2026
Tier`Dal Adamantite BP - Dec 22nd, 2000

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=6200
Imbued Koada`Dal Mithril Cuirass - June 15th, 2001

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=4919
Dwarven Plate BP - April 20th, 2001