Home Stretch – Update 6

I’m finally working the cuff of my sock, and it’s turning out lovely. I’m knitting through the back loop to keep the rows neat and organized, in a 1×1 ribbed pattern. A few more rows, and I can comfortably bind these socks off and move on to the next project! With fall just around the corner I’m thinking a nice cardigan is in order, but we’ll just have to see. I don’t tend to plan my projects but just go with whatever mood I’m in when I’m searching through my stash.

Speaking of stash, I decided to explore Hobbii a bit and see if I could get the site to work in my favour. See, Canada has a rule that if you order anything more than $100 from outside the country, you have to pay duties (on most things, not everything). Sometimes companies cover this cost (like Knitpicks) and other times, the company does not (Hobbii). Duty fees are high, and Hobbii also has a pretty high shipping cost if you don’t buy enough to qualify for free shipping. So free shipping is $75 USD, and duty is anything under $100. I managed to spend around $98.89 CAD which put me into both of those categories. I bought a yarn bag (for storage / projects on the go), and around 10 skeins of yarn. Most are sock yarn but two skeins are worsted weight acrylic that I’m hoping turn into a nice sweater. Some people really love their yarn, others have opinions. I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a try, and in the grand scheme of things, this little experiment didn’t cost me too much (plus it has been a while since I picked up any yarn).

Older Halfling Homes

My inquisitor (who happens to own a room in Qeynos) has an adorable halfling sized home that I’m quite proud of, even if it has aged a bit. She has all of her comforts, as well as a nice fulfilling kitchen. What sort of halfling would she be if she didn’t have an impressive pantry, after all! It was lovely to go back to her home and tour through her collection of items. Each character of mine has their own home decorated to suit their personalities. I’ve always loved that EQ2 gave me the opportunity to do that.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Searching for a Halfling Home

This week I created a new character over on the Maj’dul server, and joined a small group of friends who are going through some older content. I decided to go with a Halfling coercer – sometime between when I played last in 2016 and now, they moved enchanters over to the ‘neutral’ category so that you could be either illusionist or coercer with any race available. In the past, coercers were limited to evil races. Illusionists were limited to good races. I love coercers. It’s my favourite class. I also love halflings, they’re my favourite race. It made sense that I went with this combination.

I made it to level 30 pretty easily and that’s where I turned all of my adventure experience to AA so that I could stay at this level for a while. I also decided to go down the jewel craft line for crafting, and I made it to level 55. That lets me get some mount quests out of the way and unlocks some things that would be unavailable unless I raised my adventure level.

Next was to find a home. I’m using my second account for this character, so I don’t have a lot of the bells and whistles that my main account has. I did have a few veteran bonuses to claim, and after touring through a number of different prestige homes, I settled on the Isle of Refuge.

I plan on creating a farm / garden type home for my halfling coercer, and refurbishing the basement that comes in the mage tower into some sort of bedroom. These days there are tons of building blocks and other items you can use to completely build your dream home from scratch, and I’d like mine to be halfling sized. There’s also an editor you can use to make sure your items get placed exactly how you’d like them, flipping and rotating them and all that good stuff. The homeshow channel (/join antonia_ bayle.homeshow) is as active as ever, with competitions and events being posted on the forums, and once again I’m reminded of how hands-on this community is (and how much I love it). For now, there’s very little in the home, but I’m sure that will change with time.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

The Specifics

What have I been up to since I’ve returned to game? Well, to start it off I do have three active accounts – these were the same accounts I had active on EQ1, since station access grants all access across games, I just continued playing them. I’m used to the alt-tab method of boxing, and since EQ2 has a spell queue system, it’s pretty simple. I spent a little time deciding what I wanted my group to be and settled on my coercer/carpenter, fury/sage, berzerker/woodworker for the main group – along with two mercenary. That leaves me with room to invite others to play, or to use the mercenary depending on whether or not I can find a group. Next came leveling. The berzerker and the fury are already 120, but the coercer is(was) sitting at level 100 from when I played last and was leveling in Skyshrine. I’m not sure where to level these days, most people say that questing through PoM is the way to go, and then you can get from 110-120 in about three hours of pre-blood of luclin questing. I’m not quite at that point yet, but I did take the coercer to the Plane of Magic to quest, and she’s sitting at level 105.

Next was to work on their crafting. I’ve been trying to get them all to at least 100 crafter, and then working on the tradeskill quests to raise them further. Right now the sage just hit level 51, and the woodworker and carpenter were already at 100 from last time I played. I have them training their mounts, training their mercenary, training familiars, participating in Overseer – and that’s pretty much where I’m at so far. I’ve been doing two solo dungeons in RoS (current content) but I haven’t continued the timeline yet because I want that coercer to be able to quest as well, and for now she’s too small.

When the summer event starts next week (the 10th is the reported date) I’ll have three more 120 boosts (one per account) and I plan on using them to boost up some alts, not only for the 20% bonus they provide for having max level characters, but also to give me some options if I don’t feel like using the static group. I’ve also been participating in the Festivals that are ongoing, the Tinkerers Fest ends tonight at 1am and the Kelethin city festival is going on right now. With all of the writs I’ve been doing I have a lot of city tokens to be able to spend. Speaking of which, the guild is inching its way towards 95 in which case I MIGHT actually upgrade the guild hall to a T4 hall instead of a T3 one (I can’t actually remember if it’s 95 for this or 100). I know it’s just me actively playing right now, but my guild is compromised of a few real life friends who haven’t played since 2016 and I find the status and plat requirements fairly simple these days.

In any case, that’s where I’m at and what I’m up to! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Producer’s Letter

Before anyone asks, yes, there are still updates to EQ2 – so what’s coming up? The producer’s letter goes into details on what we can expect this summer, including an update that is releasing August 10th, just around the corner. They are also going to be running a sort of ‘welcome back’ promotion, where if you’ve got an all access account you can obtain a 120 character boost. I do NOT suggest this for anyone actually returning to the game, but at least grab it and use it for an alt (which is exactly what I plan on doing). There will be bonus satchels if you’re questing in Reign of Shadows (the latest expansion) and are also an all access member, and they include things like currency.

There used to be an event called Days of Summer – which is being renamed this year to Panda, Panda, Panda! I’ve actually never participated in this before, so I’m looking forward to checking it out and seeing what everyone else is talking about when they mention it. Apparently it involves lots of .. everything. Catching your characters up, housing, that sort of stuff.

At the end of the letter there was also some sort of centaur hint, but we’ll just have to see what that is all about! I’m not sure that ‘excited’ is the right word to use, but I am certainly looking forward to seeing these events first hand. It feels comfortable to be playing, and I like that.