The Far Seas caravans rolled into Darklight Wood on September 1st, bringing their wares for the monthly city festival. Neriak is proud to feature two new local specialties as well as being the first city to have the 2010 Forum Challenge paintings for sale. The festival will continue to run until 11:59PM PDT on September 7th.

This coming weekend will have a double experience bonus, kicking off on September 3rd at 10AM PDT and concluding on September 7th at 10AM PDT. Adventurer, Alternate Advancement and Tradeskill experience will all have a 100% bonus applied to them. This bonus weekend will affect all US, French, German, Japanese, Test and EQ2 Extended servers.

On the 20th of this month, the phases of the moon will once again be aligned, revealing the secretive grottos. Moonlight Enchantments will run from 12:01AM PDT on September 20th and will conclude at 11:59PM PDT on September 21st. No new items are expected to be on the grotto merchants.

Eight new druid rings in Norrath still feature the Druid Ring Reconstruction Event quests. Complete these repeatable quests to earn tokens that can be exchanged for special reward items, several of which are unique to this event. Players who have helped out with at least ten different tasks for the rings can assist Kurista in fulfilling the Path of the Prophet. This event is expected to remain until Game Update 58.

Aimee "Ashlanne" Rekoske posted on the Station Community Forums:

Account services, including account maintenance, all commerce, and Station Store will be down for maintenance for 3 hours on Thursday, September 2, 2010, from 5:00 am PDT to 8:00 am PDT.

The Station Store and all commerce avenues will be unavailable for the duration of maintenance. This may also affect the performance of the forums and any or all accounts' abilities to log in.

Here's our handy Time Zone Conversion Tool to help you plan!

According to the official forums there will be a hotfix Wednesday morning.  The US servers will come down on September 1, 2010, at 7am PDT for a hotfix.  The expected downtime is 1 hour.  No mention was made of the EU servers, but we would expect them to be patched at their normal time of day.

See the hotfix patch notes below the jump!

Tomorrow is the beginning of September, bringing us the Neriak City Festival!  The Festival should start September 1st at 12:01am PDT and run until September 7th at 11:59pm PDT.  You can find the Far Seas Caravan in Darklight Wood in the area between Neriak and the chasm.

This month you can pick up two new Neriak-themed house items: a plain purple streetlamp and a Neriak display counter.  Also new this month's festival: if you're simply overloaded with City Tokens, speak to Sanya Farshore who will be happy to either buy them from you for 250 status points each or sell you some new paintings!

Here in the States we celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday of September, giving most of us a three day weekend.  What better way to spend it than in Norrath!  Today on the official forums SOE announced a true double experience weekend:

This coming weekend, from 10:00 am PDT on Friday, September 3rd, until 10:00 am PDT on Tuesday, September 7th, we will be running a true Double XP promotion (+100% XP).

The bonus applies to AA, tradeskill and adventure experience gained this weekend. Our French, German, Japanese, Test and EQ2 Extended servers will also be enjoying the increase in XP gain.

If you want to maximize that double experience, our handy Time Zone Conversion Tool can help you plan! 

Did you know that after completing some crafting quest series you can buy your Advanced recipe volumes for that tier?  Where do you find Bartending for Sadists?  How do you get the recipes for Battlegrounds gear and Mark of Manaar gear?

Whether you're looking for the recipe for Mooshga Mush or need a Chocolate Chip Cookie, you should find it all on our new Recipe Book Guide!

Game Update 57 brought developer attention to Greater Faydark, where the Nursery series has been revamped.  The story has changed just a bit and the progression is much smoother than the original.  Later in the Greater Faydark quests new players receive their first mount as they infiltrate Crushbone Territory.

We walk you through the entire zone in our updated Greater Faydark Quest Series Guide!