Wednesday, Feb. 4 (which is today depending on your time zone) is a big day in Telon. First, a game update will be implemented at 5 a.m. PST which will introduce three new quests, as well as new appearance slots that "allow you to display the look of a different item while retaining the mods of your gear." There's also other changes coming in the update, which can be found here or below.

But that's not all. The Winter Solstice anniversary event to celebrate two years of Vanguard will be held on Feb. 4 and 6 in the city of Ahgram at the following times:

• Halgar – 1PM PST / 4PM EST / 10PM CET
• Xeth – 2PM PST / 5PM EST
• Sartok – 3PM PST / 6PM EST
• Seradon – 4PM PST / 7PM EST

And if you can't log in for any reason, you can watch the festivities over at the Spouse Aggro blog.

The winter solstice has come and passed. The inhabitants of Telon are welcoming the return of the sun and longer days. In the wake of Gloriann’s Festival, strange things are happening in New Targonor. First came the horrific nightmares. Then children began going missing. Despite the best efforts of the Thestran Watch and the Sages Arcane to find any evidence, little to no light has been shed on either occurrence. Though warmer days are ahead for Telon, how dark will they be?

Those curious about the recent events should seek out Edric Nichols amongst New Targonor’s courtyards and perhaps have a look for themselves.


3 New quests from strange beings belonging to the ‘Winter Court’.

• Help the Winter Court acquire Dreams, Reflections, and Memories from the lands and waters of Telon.
• Rewards include a unique enhancement item, a new fishing pole, and a new pet – Snuggles, the winter wolf.
• Wakliki Nogswort and Finch’s Finks have a limited time offer as well. Those wanting to do battle in the Arena will want to check out his latest deal.
• For long standing veterans, a new /claim item – “The Visionary’s Signet of Promise” – how will you choose to build your future?

SOD

• All NPCs on SOD should now give a small faction bonus when killed.
• All SOD non boss NPCs hit points have been reduced significantly.
• A set of global rares have been added to the entire island. These are new legendary items that can drop of any NPC in the area.
• Fixed display on rucksack that said it was a drop from tier 2 bags when it is in fact a recipe drop from tier 4 bags.
• Content
• Changed Guar's display model to hopefully resolve some of the lag issues.
• Queen Vixx's hit points have been fixed.
• The waters around the towers of BOD are now shark infested. Beware those who like to skinny dipping.
• The rare elementals in BOD are much more available now and always drop loot.  They also have a chance to drop weapon parts.
• Fixed an issue where some mobs were casting Pantheon abilities.
• Guar’s loot table now drops a paladin range slot item.
• IOG Raid encounters can now drop a paladin range slot item.
• The apprentices in BOD have a new stones on them.  These stones are used for summoning a new raid boss that will be coming soon and aimed at APW capable guilds.  The raid target is NOT live with this patch, but you can start gathering the stones to summon him now.

Appearance Slots

• New appearance slots can now be accessed from the character screen. These slots allow you to display the look of a different item while retaining the mods of your gear.
• All non stat clothing that was on merchants has been converted to adventuring slots for use with appearance slots.
• General goods vendors now sell some basic equipment that has no visual display for that slot. This allows you to turn off the visual of certain slots by placing that item in an appearance slot.

General Appearance Bugs Fixed

• Previewing an item with an attachment when the equipped item for that slot did not have an attachment caused the preview item to remain on the character's appearance. It now correctly disappears.
• Previewing a bow when there is no bow equipped, but an item equipped that covered the players back, previously did not show the bow on the character, it now does.
• Mousing over an item that cannot be equipped will no longer show an item compare with a previously equipped item that is now unequipped. Items that cannot be equipped will now never incorrectly compare with other items.
• Mousing over a two-handed sword will show a comparison against both the primary and secondary weapons, rather than simply the primary one. Also, the first compare window will always be filled before the second ever is. Previously the second window would sometimes pop up without the first (if a one-handed weapon was moused over, and the primary-hand slot was empty, but the secondary-hand slot was full).
• Various bugs fixed that caused items to visually disappear off of your character until you relogged.

Enchantments

• Fixed a bug where the stats from enchantments would not show up on your character sheet after you chunked.
• Fixed a bug where enchantments would disappear off of the items they were attached to.
• Bonus AC enchantments should now display their mods correctly

Abilities / Classes

• Bloodmage blood pact will nolonger work with focus or siphon blood. It does not pact when the damage is done by the player losing life. Any ability cast by a player on themself causing their hp to go down should nolonger work with bloodpact.
• Soaring leap and xennu boots no longer work when in water
• Paladins can now equip short bows
• Fix for ability learning/research.  You should be able to learn these abilities now without issue.
• Ability re-use no-longer appears to tick down on the client while you are dead.  They were not ticking on the server previously, and this was causing the client/server to be out of sync for those abilities.
• The dot portion of cleave now stacks.
• The damage of cleave has been tuned down.
• Cleave no longer modifies the incoming critical chance for everyone for 3 seconds it now increases the warriors ability to crit for 10 seconds

General

• All flying mounts should be using a standard cast time of 6 seconds. This does not affect special case mounts like the griffon used in the Sano event
• Fixed an issue with npcs who had a leash range was set greater than 200.  This will fix an issue with Summoner Physik.
• HP, Energy, and Endurance now update much more often on the client.  Previously it would update every .5 seconds, now it updates every server tick.
• Changed the way NPCs handle their spells being countered.  Previously they would re-cast the spell after 6 seconds.  Now they will wait for the full refresh of that spell before casting it again.
• Energized Hammer proc is back in and working properly.
• _defensive_target_ no longer shows on the menu obtained by right-clicking on the defensive target .
• Heal Effectiveness is fixed and no-longer doing 100x what it said it was.
• Fix for animation related crashes.
• Fix for large memory leak.
• Various region server crash fixes.
• Fixed the social server crash.
• Fix for players getting infamy/loot from fights like shylosia, physik, etc.
• Fix to defensive target getting bugged out when a player dies. It now is correctly cleared.
• Fix for some DoT tooltips.
• Fix to bards being able to damage people they shouldn’t be able to.
• Fix to display and updating issues with infamy.
• IO Interaction is now canceled when an NPC or Player tries to attack you.