Tag: EQ

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!

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!

The daily adventure today was Neriak – Fourth Gate, so off I went with my little team of three (and mercs, of course) hoping to ding 106 – and I did! At 106 conflagrant gear becomes available, and while I have no idea where it comes from I do plan on looking into it, because it is *amazing* gear, and a HUGE upgrade over what I was wearing. I’m hoping this makes heroic adventures a bit easier, some of them still really hurt. My shaman is on her way to 99, part way through at the time of this post, and I’m hoping things slow down a bit for her to catch up. Both the shadowknight and the enchanter need to manually go after their AA again, it’s no longer auto granted (boo) so I’ll have to make sure I keep up with that, too. I really enjoyed having them given to me!

On top of all of that, I need to pick up spells, check out tradeskilling, and continue playing Overseer which is a neat way of getting some passive experience (or craft items). It’s not exactly the game I thought I’d be playing, but I certainly have no complaints!

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

I know these heroic adventures used to be quite popular, but there was no one around last night when I attempted to run a few in Dead Hills – still, I had fun earning experience and currency to gear up my little team. The shaman (who I’m quite proud of) reached level 97, tied with my ranger. The shadowknight and enchanter each inched their way through part of 105, at least enough so that they won’t lose their levels any more if they should die.

There’s a bunch of changes to crafting I’d like to look into, as well as leveling my crafting trophies, and all that good stuff, so I might dive into that next. I have absolutely no idea where to start, but I bet I can figure it out.

When I stopped playing EverQuest last time, I had reached level 100 with my enchanter, 97 with my bard, and the shadowknight had also reached 100. I was playing with a good friend who has since moved to another server so they could participate in raids – but that’s OK, there’s still lots of folks around. I don’t think heroic adventures were a thing, but they are now, and they’re a neat way of getting experience and obtaining some gear / items if you’re not exactly geared to handle the awesome current content (which of course I am no where near).

Anyway, there’s an NPC in PoK who will send you off to work on some heroic adventures, or you can just bypass that and go read up on one of the guides out there like this one from Almar. You can start heroic adventures at 75 (they scale) but it’s recommended that you hold off for a bit. I’ve only done a handful so far, but they’ve been pretty fun and offer up some good experience and an alternative way of leveling if you’re bored of open world zone grinding. Most of the quests I’ve found tend to be ‘save my village, collect these items’ type, but there’s also the chance for a rare spawn to show up and provide some extra loot (so long as you can kill them).

Hopefully completing these will give some gear alongside the experience so my characters are not so poorly equipped. Next I need to look into upgrading their spells.