It’s PoP Time, Baby!

This weekend was spent hunting down various named through Luclin, and eventually ending at working for bane weapons to defeat the bosses in SSRA – which we did. It took some time, we had to farm the basement for some green mist ore, do a combine with some shissar weapons, and then actually defeat the named – which I feel was our most difficult encounter so far, because there was a nasty slow that curse that needed to be cured.

Speaking of cured – that’s right, I can now cure. I’ve dropped my beastlord spec and instead decided to go cleric. So at the time of this post, I’m a cleric, ranger, enchanter. Having complete heal at this stage of the game is pretty much a requirement. I’m a ranger for the forage ability (I didn’t want to go druid, and those are the only ones who have the proper forage), enchanter so I can enchant metals for my crafting, and now cleric to help with progression.

Now that Plane of Knowledge is FINALLY unlocked, I can hang out there to tradeskill – except the machines are usually already all being used. Oof. I did get baking to 45 – thank you Batwing Crunchies.

Next? Well, we’ve completed flagging in plane of disease, and plane of innovation – we’ve also taken down thule (I was having too much fun and did not get screenshots of any of this). I believe up next we’re doing the trials of Justice, but I’m not 100% sure. I’m also leveling up my class idol and finally have something in the charm slot.

Over all? Still having a lot of fun – I’m excited about maybe getting into plane of time before too long (this has only been released 2-3 weeks or so now). As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself.

A lot of unlocks..

Vox and Nagafen went down without a fight, and then it was time to kill a few more dragons – and then a few more. Right now the character cap for my character is 60, and I’m just shy of unlocking Planes of Power. I need more AA before I attempt that, and in the meantime I’ve been farming things to sell.

There’s a currency on this server called ‘Echo of Memories’ and they’re purchased with RL money but they also drop in game. You can sell this on the bazaar, and they’re used for a few QoL things. 5 EOM will let you port directly from the Bazaar to your expedition zone, and it also lets you take your party along with you. 30 EOM will let you purchase a 100 slot bag that also lets you sell directly to vendor anything that’s inside of it. It can only hold small items – perfect for those craft supplies you’ve been hording. It also has 100% weight reduction. The other EOM bag that I want, is 40 slots, and can hold up to giant items. This one also has 100% weight reduction.

You can also use EOM to change your race, and your appearance. I believe they can also be used to change your class. We’re all given one free class change and then there’s a timer and a cost (from my understanding).

Speaking of – I decided to change my main. I didn’t opt to change but instead just decided to remake. Instead of the Shadowknight/Berzerker/Monk that I had been rocking, I opted to go for a Gnome Enchanter/Ranger/Beastlord – and I plan on crafting with this character. I wanted a Gnome for tinkering, and a ranger for forage. The enchanter to enchant metals (plus illusions for factions) and the beastlord is just a class I enjoy playing. So far she is locked at level 56, but has zero AA, which puts me quite far behind my old main. This Easter the server is supposedly going to turn experience bonus back on (yay) so I should be able to catch up then.

Most players on the server have been kind and helpful, the chats are constantly active, and I’ve had a bazaar character set up for all of the time that I’m too busy to actually play. I just earned 50,000 plat, but ended up spending it all on EOM (which are currently set to 1595p each, it looks like there’s a few people who just hoard them and resell for higher prices). You can’t really take the goblin out of me. In any case, I’ve been having an absolute blast, and I can’t wait to continue on with my progression.

A Day in Castle Mistmoore

I’ve been playing THJ EverQuest EMU for two days now, and it has taken me some time to settle down with a selection of classes that I actually fully enjoy but I think I’ve finally found my combination. I didn’t want to be overwhelmed with having to purchase spells for three different classes, so I remade and I’ve been playing a berzerker/monk/paladin combination that seems to be everything I was looking for, at least so far.

My husband is still playing his berzerker/monk/rogue combination, and we’re currently level locked at 30. The advice from most is to lock here, and reach the current cap of 150aa before proceeding, so that’s what we’re doing. We created a respawning instance of Castle Mistmoore (this has a 2h timer, everything respawns but you won’t get any big named, the other version is a despawning version, big named will only spawn once, and I believe that instance is on a 14h timer). We can then farm the entire instance just the two of us – and experience happens to be zone wide because you’re in an expedition. While the husband is at work or doing chores, I can continue soloing the zone, and vice versa.

Right now I’m sitting at 82/150 aa earned. There’s also a gear leveling system, so we’ve been taking advantage of that. As you earn experience, any piece of gear (minus augments and bags) that you put in your ‘power’ slot, will level. Gear can come in 3 different flavours, the base version – an enchanted version – and a legendary version. It takes a long time to reach the legendary version of a piece of gear. These items can also drop in their base/enchanted/legendary versions, and you can sell them. I’ve been slowly working on my gear so that all of it is enchanted, and then I’ll contemplate working some to legendary (again, long process). I’m also thinking of starting some tradeskills, because why not.

The players on this EMU are lovely and helpful. All chat goes to the OOC channel which is also replicated on their discord server, so if you have a question about pretty much anything, you can search discord because chances are it has already been asked.

Once we reach 150aa we’ll go back to leveling and attempting to reach level 50. Our ‘big’ goal is to take down Lord Nagafen, and Lady Vox. We’ll see how that goes. It’s required to unlock the next stage of progress, and I’m pretty excited about it.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Restless

I’m not sure when I played EverQuest last, but it was probably a few years ago. When a friend started talking to me about The Heroes’ Journey, an EverQuest EMU, I was interested. I’ve never actually played an EMU before – and a lot of that is because of the moral decision associated with it. SOE/Daybreak/Whoever they are now have never taken down the numerous EMU that have been around over the years (doesn’t necessarily mean they approve), and they even officially endorsed P99 at one point in time giving them legal permission to run. If they’re OK with it then why shouldn’t I be. Anyway, we’re not here to debate the ‘should we, shouldn’t we aspect of the game.

I patched up, and read a bit about the server before diving in. Unlike P99 this EMU is focused on giving players a good solo/small group experience – while disallowing things like multiboxing. Every character is basically three classes in one (hence my screenshot above which is my Shadowknight / Monk / Beastlord character). There are a few other QoL changes, you can create respawning or not respawning instances so you don’t have to compete with everyone else, you can trade just about every item in game including epic components, and you can enable AA at level 1 (you even get a few QoL AA for free). There’s a progression to the server, you have to accomplish certain goals to unlock the next expansion/content – and they have two methods for this. You can choose the ‘Hero’ path (which includes things like killing both Vox and Nagafen), or the ‘Explorer’ path, which includes collecting some specialized items and turning them in to an NPC.

So far? I’m having a lot more fun than I was expecting and I’ve just reached level 16. I started playing EverQuest when Luclin was released, so that’s the expansion I’m most familiar with. I leveled up in Shar Vahl, headed out to Mistweaver’s Thicket, then headed to PC to grind in the caverns a little bit. There are about 3,500 people playing at any given time (at least this weekend while I’ve been playing) with some 14,000 people total involved since its release.

I don’t know how long the interest will last, but in the mean time, it’s nice to be playing. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

A Few Small Sales

Any game will see inflation happen over years, and since EverQuest is, well, quite old, there is a LOT of inflation. Krono are selling for about 2.7 million to 3 million plat on my server, on the FV where inflation is even more prevalent they go for almost double that. I’ve got a trader set up in the Bazaar that I try to leave up when I’m not playing but that’s also when everyone else is not playing, so there’s not a lot of shoppers. Not only that, but the items I have up for sale are outdated and may as well be antiques. I’ve tried to put craft materials up for those who may be doing the 1-300 grind (I’ll talk about the 300-350 grind in another post) but so far the only items I’ve actually sold have been defiant pieces – twink gear.

Group progress has been coming along incredibly well. My shadowknight and enchanter both reached level 106 which opened up the crafted conflagrant gear. This gear is from Ring of Scale, and each piece has about double the stats that my old gear had. Needless to say it was all a HUGE upgrade, and I feel quite god-like doing the content I was doing before in my old gear. I couldn’t afford to upgrade every slot on the enchanter, but I did take the time to gear up the shadowknight properly, being the tank and all.

The shaman is closing in on level 100 – I have the other two characters grinding with a 50/50 (leveling/AA) so that they don’t climb too much faster than the shaman while she catches up. Once she hits 100 I’m going to start Shard’s Landing with her, which is the last actual group content that I had done when I played back in.. 2013. I’m just a bit behind.

On the shadowknight my AA are going to tank-related skills, focusing on Ring of Scale, and a huge portion (150!) of AA is going towards unlocking another gem slot. You can never have too many. On my enchanter I’m doing things a bit different, I really want to get her tradeskills to 350, which means I need to unlock 13 ranks of tradeskill mastery that go up by 5 points each rank. Gross.

I’m having such a good time playing again and I have to admit that MOST of that joy is because of Daybreaks decision to allow auto-grant AA. Without having the AA I needed to get to this point there’s no way it would be as enjoyable. That feature does stop after 105, but it’s a good enough start to not feel completely left behind, at least.

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