Players will NOT be able to play this campaign until after this patch has completed, even if they purchase the campaign prior to this maintenance.

US and EU servers, as well as the EQ2 website, will be brought offline on Tuesday, April 28, 2015 at 7am PT (~3pm London Time) for the Rum Cellar campaign patch. Estimated downtime for both sets of servers is approximately three hours.

For more details about Rum Cellar and to help contribute to its guides, check out our wiki page. Patch notes are now available after the jump.

The first campaign of Daybreak Games' new DLC strategy for EverQuest II is scheduled to launch on Monday, April 28, 2015. Here's the nitty gritty on the campaign's cost and contents.

Rum Cellar is available as a stand-alone purchase for $14.99. And, since this new distillery-themed environment is full of Level 100+ content is connected to Altar of Malice (EQ2’s most recent expansion, which is required to play the Rum Cellar campaign), you can also purchase Rum Cellar bundled the campaign with the expansion: $49.99 for Rum Cellar + Altar of Malice, or $94.99 for Rum Cellar + Altar of Malice Collector’s Edition.

The campaign's features include:

• 2 Solo Zones (1 Solo and 1 Advanced Solo)
• 3 Heroic Zones (1 Heroic, 1 Event Heroic, 1 Event Heroic-Challenge)
• Raid Zone with 10 Bosses
• Lots of Loot, including drops of a Rare Elite Mercenary and a Zeppelin Mount
• New Achievements and Titles
• New Gems for Armor
• New Collections
• Merchant who accepts Far Sea Ferrin (who also sells a Zeppelin Mount!)

If you want to check out Rum Cellar early, you can hop onto the Beta server and help test!

On Tuesday, April 7th Holly "Windstalker" Longdale, Chris "Chrol" Garlick and Ry "Roshen" Schueller ran a preview livestream of the upcoming Rum Cellar campaign. If you missed the stream, catch up on its 57 minute recording now!

The recently announced Rum Cellar Campaign is on Beta and ready to test! Head to a world bell and choose "Far Seas Distillery" (above Tranquil Sea on the map) to get to the area outside the zone.

Rum Cellar will introduce the level 100 Far Seas Distillery zone to Altar of Malice. This zone has six instance types (Solo, Advanced Solo, Heroic, Event Heroic, Event Heroic – Challenge Version and Raid), but none of the content is locked. In the story you'll find yourself teaming up with the Brokenskull pirates to help prevent the Rumpocolypse (an end to rum production—such a travesty), starting with a temporary undead parrot companion named Nibbles who will assist your recon of the distillery. The entire campaign story is delivered through the solo and heroic zones, while the raid zone story is complimentary to the storyline. Raiders can expect 10 raid events: nine plus a one-shot boss.

Join fellow testers and sneak-peek enthusiasts on the Beta server! Two important notes:

While we'll continue to be reviewing reports we get in-game sent via /bug and /feedback, we'll also using Reddit as a place to collect feedback and bug reports from the Rum Cellar Campaign beta. If you haven't used this before, you can find it here: www.reddit.com/r/EQ2/. The devs will be will be using Reddit as one of their primary ways to discuss and review Beta issues so we can stay current and have the community up-vote and down-vote relevant or irrelevant issues.

Please use the Full Download setting in the patcher for Beta. The streaming client is choking on some assets at the moment. You can use our Beta Copy feature by typing /beta on a character you want to copy.

Rum Cellar is expected to be available for purchase on Live servers on April 28, 2015. For more information, tune in to the Rum Cellar Campaign Livestream on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 starting at 1PM Pacific on Twitch!

Yes, we know it's April Fools Day. This announcement is 100% serious.

One of the major concerns players had back in February was whether or not content would continue to roll in as expected for EverQuest II. In a Producer's Letter released this evening by Executive Producer Holly "Windstalker" Longdale, it was announced that the team will now be releasing content in "campaigns" in lieu of the common expansions and game updates we have become accustomed to in years past. We attended a roundtable with Holly this afternoon to discuss this change as well as the upcoming Rum Cellar campaign and beyond.

UPDATE April 2nd: Clarification on zone instance types has been included below.