A Pixel Nomad

Above is the miniature replica of the Temple of Life – part of the new live events going on surrounding the void storms and all that goodness. You also got another book with this ‘quest’ (I’m reluctant to call it a quest because your journal does not actually update at all while working on this) that sparkles. It’s part three to a series though which makes me wonder where part one and two may be located. I’ve started putting together a little shelf of information / items obtained while working through this lead-in to the newest expansion.

To obtain your very one replica of the temple of life:

There’s no real quest involved, which may be why this item is so difficult to find. What you need to do is head to North Qeynos, to the temple of life. If you’re evil aligned beware of the level 80 epic guards who may try to thwart you. Once you’re at the temple, step into the water and you will see a node called ‘a glowing school of koalindl’ that you can harvest. Fish up one of those, and open your inventory. You will see the fish there – right click the object and examine it, you’ll have an option to set it free.

Do so, and you’ll receive a key.
Now it’s time to head to the down below. Which is level 1 of the sewers of Qeynos. At /waypoint -206, 0, -24 you will find a chest – use your new found key on it and you will find a new book for your house, along with the miniature replica of the temple of life.

You can find my complete write up on the Beckett MOG forums here including how to get those cute little Everfrost plushies that were added.

Last night aside from getting the temple quest done, I decided it was time to work on the harvesting quest. Silhouette had yet to complete a single one. Something to keep in mind – each one of the four quests offered rewards you with aa for T2+ because they all have different titles. They also count towards your quest count, each one showing up in your journal. So what I have been doing is going through each tier and doing all the quests per tier, to get the aa from them, as well as getting my quest count up. Excluding T1 that will be 28 quests, then I can just run the simple ones the last two times to finish off the 30 I need for the title.

I did manage to wiggle my way into Everfrost for a little bit early yesterday morning, finishing off the charm quest on Silhouette – even though it took a few hours of hunting sheep. If people had of been willing to group together, it would have gone a lot quicker.

While I was in the Down Below working on my temple of life quest, I decided I may as well hang out and collect the red shinies for my jello cube house pet. You get a choice of three cubes, one is clear (the one pictured) another green slime, and another looks like a wooden crate. I’d rather be able to tell these items to sit still and not move anywhere, but they can freely roam around Silhouette’s 5 room Gorowyn house along with her billy doll (who is just weird, every time I zone in he makes for the stairs and wanders away).

Yesterday was my first trip into Veksar in EQ2. I had exceptionally fond memories of the zone from EQ1, especially since Nostalgia the Guild had just been there not too long ago. I spent days and weeks and months in the zone back in 2003. I even did the dragon raid as one of my very first raids and it was so much fun. Not with a proper raid of course, back then Veksar was already old news. I had high expectations though.

I was dissapointed with this new Veksar. I understand it’s just a teaser and therefor not very large. How come we couldn’t have gotten a completed Kurn’s Tower that we were promised with the release of RoK?

The zone reminded me of every other sewer zone in EQ2, especially the Freeport hideout where you have to kill an epic. Granted, there was one portion of this zone that was underwater (the entrance to zone in – and just past once you’re in the zone) but I had expected.. I don’t know, more.

There are only four named in the zone, and my group may have had a single death or two when someone took too much of an AOE, but we went in with 1 shadowknight tank, 1 templar, 1 assassin, 1 conj, 1 illusionist, and myself playing dirge and had no issues at all. We got three legendary chests and a master chest though I didn’t win a single thing. Not even a piece of trash loot – go figure. One item was an upgrade to the conj, everything else was just roll for greed. The master wasn’t anything anyone could use.

I know there are at least three fabled pretties within the zone, but no one saw any of them this time around. The entire zone didn’t even take 45 minutes. and that was with some pretty careful pulling by the tank. The final named had some adds spawn with the encounter that the enchanter made short work of, and has a nasty elemental AOE. The named before that one splits into pieces – but if you tank it in the front left hand corner (if you’re at the doorway facing inwards) you don’t actually get any of those adds and you can single pull them later. There are some worms that spawn a la Deathtoll style, and you have to turn some statues and place a rod – but other then that the zone left me with very little desire to go back.

There are four quests that involve the zone. One has you killing the mobs around the Omen’s Call docks first. Get that done and it opens up another quest for within the zone. Once you have the three quests you’ll find a fourth from a corpse in one of the rooms. The quests require some killing, some clicking, and you get nothing but some coin and a book.

I was far more impressed with the revamp of Everfrost then by the release of this instance. Did you know (of course you did) that there is a quested charm slot item from Everfrost that rivals and surpasses almost every single other charm slot item out there aside from high end raid charms? It’s better then the contested Mayong charm item. Better then the wishbone crafted item – there are five choices of charm, for every class, and the quest is simple.

Of course it’s not so simple right now because there are 40+ people in everfrost who are level 80’s trying to complete this amazing quest.

It’s like the Butcherblock charm item quest that people were doing, since it was pretty good (before the faction recipes were added that include the wishbone etc). A level 25 solo quested item can surpass T8 easily. Now we see it again with Everfrost. It’s great that all of these things are getting revamped, and I’m enjoying the extra content. I have to wonder to myself though what exactly is it doing for the balance of the game.

For me, EverQuestII is all about finding an outlet. It’s an outlet for when I’m having a bad day and need to smush something, or when I just want to relax and hang out with friends – and even a creative outlet for writing roleplay stories, and more recently, decorating houses. Well ok so I’ve been decorating homes off and on for four years and it’s actually always been an intrical part of my gameplay, but it was never really a creative outlet for me.

I was asked today why I play EQ2 over other games. Over things that have a heavy social aspect like Second Life, over other mmo’s, and whatever else. WHY EQ2. My answer was quite simple – because for me, EQ2 has the best balance of everything I enjoy.

If I just wanted to decorate homes, I’d play the sims (and in fact played for a very long time). I never really enjoyed the game, but designing and creating rooms and houses was something I could do for hours. Then I’d be all ready to move my people in and I’d stop playing.

If I only wanted to raid, or if I only wanted to adventure, and didn’t care about the other aspects of the game that I so enjoy (housing, social, adventure, raiding.. etc) then I’m sure I could find a game that caters to those things. In fact I know I could.

EverQuest2 still offers me the best balance, of all these things. World of Warcraft doesn’t have player housing (at least, not yet) and though I have played it off and on for the last four years it just doesn’t give me anything that makes me want to stay there.

Vanguard has housing, and I love my T5 home. I worked really hard on it. It also has adventuring – but it lacks end game content, and even more importantly, it lacks the heavy social interaction I crave due to lack of players. Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly people who play and I see them often but for me it just wasn’t often enough to keep me coming back time and time again.

I don’t like science fiction. Space ships and guns and what not simply put me to sleep (I know, I heard the sharp intakes of breath – I am so sorry!) so long story short – that is why I play EQ2. A combination of all of these things in an ever changing and evolving world.

I played my brigand for a little yesterday, and was sadly disappointed. Maybe it’s because I’m used to playing with a set group of people who I’ve known for years now, or maybe it’s just because I haven’t done any Pick Up Groups (PuG) in a while – but it was horrible. The tank could not tank to save their life. We ranged from level 35-40 and headed to the original Runnyeye. The group consisted of a fury, defiler (neither of which knew how to cure or group cure), shadowknight (I had 400 more hp then them), warlock (who pulled agro every single encounter), and a troubador (who was AFK the entire time – then came back from AFK to tell us they had to AFK for 15 minutes for lunch).

Did we die? No. That’s not what made this group bad. Eventually you can get to a point in the game where you can be horrible at your class, pull 10 encounters at once, and live through random button smashing. That’s how yesterday’s group went. I like tanks who pull back to the group, or turn mobs, or at least don’t just run into a room sans taunt and just stand there for 15 seconds before initiating combat while the encounter beats on everyone else. Picky? I admit it. Rude of me to think? Maybe. I realize that not everyone has played MMO’s before, I realize that a certain amount of patience is required for these things – and I admit openly and freely that I am not the person who has this sort of patience.

I know it’s one of my major flaws. I have way more patience with friends – I simply don’t have it for random people that I haven’t met yet. I expect at level 40 for players to at least know SOMETHING of their class. I stayed for an hour or so and then decided I had enough, and went back to tradeskilling. The group simply was not for me (if you were in that group I apologize for this post, it just couldn’t be helped today).

Aside from a few crafting levels it was a very slow gaming day. I spent the afternoon sleeping trying to get rid of this horrible cold that I just simply can’t shake. We’ll see if today goes any better!