Veteran Rewards are special AA abilities available to players who have been subscribed recurringly to the game for 1 year or more. The concept was introduced with the 6th anniversary of EverQuest, which took place in March/April 2005, and finally made available to players on May 13, 2005. Here is the original announcement:
Good News for Veteran EQ players!
As part of EverQuest's 6th Anniversary celebration, the game team is giving current EQ players (based on your total subscription length) one special Veteran Reward for every year that you've been an active EverQuest subscriber! This is very good news for six year vets! It means that you'll be getting six Veteran Rewards!
Note: you'll find the Veteran Rewards tab in the game's AA user interface.
Even better news: From April 11th to May 11th, any current EQ player can purchase a one-year EQ subscription for a special price ($99.99) and get next year’s Veteran Reward (based upon total subscription time) at no additional cost! And, for you six year veteran EQ players, this is a chance to get an exclusive 7th year Veteran Reward at no additional cost.
A special note: Veteran Rewards remain with each character for as long as that character exists. For every year that a player has been subscribed, they will be able to claim the Rewards on one character.
Veteran Rewards are as follows:
1 year - Lesson of the Devoted: A character will gain double-XP for 30-minutes every 24 hours. When this reward is in effect, the character will be surrounded by a special blue-white glow.
2 years - Infusion of the Faithful: This reward grants increased run speed for 15 minutes once every 24 hours.
3 years - Chaotic Jester: Once every 24 hours, a character can summon a Bristlebane puppet for 15 minutes. During that time, the puppet randomly casts various spells that provide benefits or minor penalties.
4 years - Expedient Recovery: Once a week, this "Back to New" reward summons all of a player's corpses back to him, and gives back all XP that was on the corpses.
5 years - Steadfast Servant: Once every 24 hours, a creature is summoned that stays in the area for a half hour, buffing and healing player characters nearby.
6 years - Staunch Recovery: Once every three days, a character is healed back to full health, mana, and endurance.
7 years - Intensity of the Resolute: Once every 24 hours, a character's melee attacks, damage spells and heals are increased for five minutes. When this reward is in effect, the character will be surrounded by a glow of energy.
Every year since then, a new Veteran Reward has been added to the set.
1 Eligibility
2 Claiming and Using
3 List of Veteran Rewards
3.1 1st year - Lesson of the Devoted
3.2 2nd year - Infusion of the Faithful
3.3 3rd year - Chaotic Jester
3.4 4th year - Expedient Recovery
3.5 5th year - Steadfast Servant
3.6 6th year - Staunch Recovery
3.7 7th year - Intensity of the Resolute
3.8 8th year - Throne of Heroes
3.9 9th year - Armor of Experience
3.10 10th year - Summon Resupply Agent
3.11 11th year - Summon Clockwork Banker
3.12 12th year - Summon Permutation Peddler
3.13 13th year - Summon Personal Tribute Master
3.14 14th year - Blessing of the Devoted
Eligibility is on a per-account basis. To check your accounts eligibility, log on to any character on the account and type /played. You will get an output that looks like this:
Zliz's birthdate: Thursday, February 26, 2009 20:41:25.
Total time playing Zliz: 541 days, 17 hours, and 58 minutes
This session: 8 minutes and 50 seconds
Your total time entitled on this account is approximately 8 years, 252 days.
The interesting number is the number of years entitled, displayed on the last line. 8 years entitled means that this acount can claim a set of the first 8 Veteran Rewards on 8 different characters. As the entitlement increases as you stay subscribed, each of your characters that have previously claimed Veteran Rewards will automatically receive new abilities.
If you as per this example have 8 years of eligibility and "spend" a set of veteran rewards on a character, you can claim 8 veteran rewards again on 7 further characters.
Some may find that they have more years of eligibility than they have actually been subscribed. Not really worth complaining about. :)
On the Test server, regardless of account age, all characters automatically get all Veteran Rewards upon character creation.
To claim all the Veteran Rewards you are eligible for on a character, type /veteranreward. A confirmation window will appear, asking you to confirm that you want to irreversibly claim a set of Veteran Rewards for this particular character. Be careful, as this cannot be undone.
After claiming the rewards, open your AA Window and go to the Special tab. Here you will find the Veteran Rewards in the list, under the "Veteran Reward" category, ready to hotkey and use.
In-game description: "This ability doubles the amount of experience you gain when killing NPCs for the next half an hour."
Activated, Refresh Time: 20 hours, Casting Time: 3 seconds. Spell effect: Lesson of the Devoted
Gives you a buff that increases experience gained from killing NPCs (not quests) by 100% for 30 minutes. The buff persists through death. Note that experience bonuses in EverQuest stack additively, so if it's double experience weekend for example, your total bonus experience is 100+100 = 200%.
In-game description: "This ability infuses you with raw power, greatly increasing all of your statistics, resists vs. fire, cold, poison, disease, and magic, and increasing your run speed."
Activated, Refresh Time: 20 hours, Casting Time: 3 seconds. Spell effect: Infusion of the Faithful
Gives you a buff that increases your main stats (STR, STA, etc.) by 1000, movement speed by 65% and resists by 1000 for 15 minutes. The stat buffs will not boost your stats beyond their caps for your level.
In-game description: "This ability summons forth a jester from Bristlebane's court. The jester sticks around for 15 minutes or until you zone."
Activated, Refresh Time: 20 hours, Casting Time: 3 seconds. Spell effect: Chaotic Jester
Summons "a jester of bristlebane", a Halfling NPC that follows you around for 15 minutes or until you zone. Does not count as a pet. The jester will tell jokes, summons bread, grow and shrink party members, and rarely perform heals on you. His actions are quite unpredictable and might be detrimental to you or your group mates.
In-game description: "This ability summons every corpse you have to you and returns the experience you lost for that death if the corpse is still able to be resurrected."
Activated, Refresh Time: 164 hours (6 days, 20 hours), Casting Time: 3 seconds. Spell effect: Expedient Recovery
Summons all corpses you currently have across the world and performs a 100% resurrection on them, providing the resurrection timer has not expired.
In-game description: "This ability summons forth a faithful servant that will follow you around and cast healing and beneficial buffs on you and other players near you. The servant lasts for 30 minutes or until you zone."
Activated, Refresh Time: 20 hours, Casting Time: 3 seconds. Spell effect: Steadfast Servant
Summons "a steadfast servant", an imp NPC that follows you around for 30 minutes or until you zone. Does not count as a pet. The imp will cast some buffs appropriate for your level, such as haste, mana regeneration and heals over time. The buffs and heals are very useful, particular for the solo player. The buffs used to not scale beyond around level 50, but this was changed with the March 13, 2013 patch so that they remain useful even at high levels.
In-game description: "When used, this ability restores a large amount of health, mana, and endurance."
Activated, Refresh Time: 68 hours (2 days, 20 hours), Casting Time: 3 seconds. Spell effect: Staunch Recovery
Restores 500000 hitpoints, mana and endurance.
In-game description: "This ability greatly increases the power of your melee and ranged attacks, your chance to perform critical hits on direct damage and damage-over-time spells, and your chance to perform exceptional heals on both direct healing and heal-over-time spells."
Activated, Refresh Time: 4 hours, Casting Time: Instant. Spell effect: Intensity of the Resolute
Gives you a buff that increases your chance of getting critical strikes on almost all forms of combat and spell casting, and increases your base melee and ranged damage for 1 minute.
In-game description: "This ability enables you to teleport to the Throne of Heroes in the Guild Lobby."
Activated, Refresh Time: 1 hour, 12 minutes, Casting Time: 16 seconds. Spell effect: Throne of Heroes
Teleports you to the large throne in the center of the Guild Lobby.
In-game description: "This Ability grants you several layers of protection from harm. As you take damage each layer will absorb ten strikes before failing. As your armor fails you will take more and more damage."
Activated, Refresh Time: 20 hours, Casting Time: Instant. Spell effect: Armor of Experience
Gives you a buff that absorbs melee hits for 1.5 minutes (increased by buff duration AAs). It can absorb a maximum of 10 hits, and the amount absorbed decreases as you take hits; from 100% to 75% to 50% to 25%.
In-game description: "Make use of the new Norrathian Resupply Initiative and summon a helpful mechanical merchant to your side! Fully stocked with a variety of useful and interesting items, our vendor is ready to take your order. You look like you could use a Fish Scale!"
Activated, Refresh Time: 20 hours, Casting Time: Instant. Spell effect: Summon Resupply Agent
Summons a gnome clockwork merchant that follows you around for 10 minutes (increased by buff duration AAs). Counts as a pet. The merchant comes stocked with 100 pieces of almost all common spell reagents such as Malachite, Pearl, Bat Wing, etc., along with some water, food, bandages, and unlimited supplies of Berserker axe components. You can also use the merchant to sell stuff.
In-game description: "Make use of the new Norrathian Banking Consortium's latest initiative and summon a helpful mechanical banker to your side! Your account is safe with us!"
Activated, Refresh Time: 20 hours, Casting Time: Instant. Spell effect: Summon Clockwork Banker
Summons a gnome clockwork banker that follows you around for 10 minutes (increased by buff duration AAs). Counts as a pet. Right-click him to access and use your bank just like any other banker in Norrath.
In-game description: "Make use of the new Norrathian Expediency Initiative and summon a augmentation distiller vendor to your side."
Activated, Refresh Time: 20 hours, Casting Time: Instant. Spell effect: Summon Distiller Vendor
Summons "Summoned Permutation Peddler", a gnome clockwork merchant, for 10 minutes or until you zone. Does not count as a pet and stays in place. The merchant sells all augmentation distillers such as Class XII Augmentation Distiller.
In-game description: "Following adoption of the Norrathian Pantheon Allegiance Initiative, this ability summons a Personal Tribute Master to your side."
Activated, Refresh Time: 20 hours, Casting Time: 3 seconds. Spell effect: Summon Tribute Master
Summons "Summoned Tribute Master", a tribute master NPC that looks like your own race, for 10 minutes or until you zone. Does not count as a pet and stays in place. The NPC can be used like any other tribute master in Norrath.
In-game description: "This passive ability reduces the time required between uses of your veteran's rewards by 25 percent."
Passive.
For example, this ability reduces the 20-hour cooldown that many Veteran Rewards have to 15 hours.