EQ – Page 34 – A Pixel Nomad

More SoD Progression

Today is Bristlebane’s Day. April Fools. It’s also rent day for me and inching closer to my birthday (I’ll be 28 and don’t mind in the least for those curious) and it happens to be the day I won’t believe a word of anything I read online, because we all know how those articles can be. NOT that I am against having fun and games, but I’d rather watch and not partake. I know, what a spoil sport.

Last night my trio dived into some more Seeds of Destruction content, and it was a very frustrating night. The quests we needed to do were flagged as solo tasks, but a few of them were so difficult there was no way we were about to finish it if we were solo. They were also some of the most annoying quests I’ve done to date.

I’m talking about the Bloody Kithicor chain of quests. The ones that make you run around the woods taking down named and then burning their house. Except the very first named you’re sent to kill has a fake in place – and when you kill him this updates for everyone on the quest. Then you kill the real version of him and he drops a piece you need to turn in to Lanys T’Vyl. Only one piece drops at a time. So we actually ended up killing him 6 times (the 2nd version of the named was red to me) and waiting for respawns in between. The fun didn’t end there though. You also need to ‘burn’ down houses – to do this you use a torch you’ve been given and click it on a wooden box you’ll find in the back of various homes. These boxes have a 7 minute respawn timer, and you need a few of them. You also need axes, with a respawn timer, and more chests, with more respawn timers.

Not to mention the portion where you talk to an NPC and four or five mean mobs who hit for 1.2 or so each spawn and attack an npc – your goal is to keep him alive. That didn’t work out so well the first round.

So I decided to do the quests another time while we completed them for Ninga and Ultann. Doing these quests unlocks further tasks along the progression, and last night I was just not in the mood to work on it.

I was thinking back to a post that Cuppy made about questing in EverQuest. She’s exactly right. While questing to level is my typical method in EQ2 it was never my main method of leveling in EQ. I grinded in experience groups at camps, and that was what I was comfortable doing. This whole task method of progressing through an expansion and especially The Void because there are so many tiers is just something I’m not comfortable with. I enjoy having a puller, and sitting and talking with my group while we lay waste to things. I dislike being constantly on the move, constantly roaming around. It may sound odd, but I suppose it just comes from my perceptions on what is ‘normal’ for me to do in game.

That being said – I have no idea where the population of Drinal stands, but the players there claim it’s fairly low. In Bloody Kithicor there was only my group and perhaps three others. I realize the expansion came out in October (so it’s been a while) but I had expected a little more of a population. Though I suppose the decrease could also be attributed to fabled going on right now and people working on that.

It was a nice quiet evening though, and that’s exactly what I was looking for. On a completely unrelated topic – good luck today Ninga! He has some fairly exciting real life stuff going on and I wish him the best. Hope everyone has a great Wednesday today, and don’t fall for any of that April Fool’s Day stuff!

Firiona Vie – Bitter Victuals

Last night saw me back in EverQuest, where as tonight I’ll be playing Lord of the Rings Online with Kasul – and I’m of course looking forward to it. After trying to decide what to do, my group (the ever present Ninga and Ultann of course) finally settled on progressing our way through a little bit more of Seeds of Destruction. It was time to head to a few zones I’d never been to before, first being Bloody Kithicor.

What Norrathian hasn’t heard of the Battle of Bloody Kithicor, one of the most notable events in Norrathian history?

Not so long ago, two great armies converged on the Kithicor Forest for one of the largest and bloodiest battles in Norrath’s history. Lanys T`Vyl, the Child of Hate and Firiona Vie, the Chosen of Tunare brought their armies to Kithicor to wage war for the fate of Antonica.

You can go here to read all of the lore surrounding this zone, and there is a lot. I love these stories, I never really experienced them the first time I played EverQuest because – well because I was still new to gaming and I didn’t even realize what a draw that could be for me personally.

The next portion of progression required us to speak to Firiona Vie (who hasn’t changed in all this time might I add) and she sent us off to an instanced version of Old Commonlands. Our first task was to take care of pesky spiders and loot their poison glands. While your “guide” Selkith takes the glands and makes a poison for you to use, he sends you out to kill the Murkwater Assassins, and then to insert each one of the poison bottles into various chests around the Murkwater camp.

Selkith doesn’t want you to tell Firiona Vie what you did, because she wouldn’t approve of the method (sneaking into their camp and poisoning them all) you kill a named (who doesn’t drop any loot, boo) and you’re off onto the next mission afterwards. It took quite a bit of time simply because the spiders were onto us. Literally. We’d be a good 100 feet away from a spider and then all of the sudden we’d have a whole lot of them that just seemed to instantly show up all at the same time. It must have been my deodorant, or lack there of. I am a necromancer after all.

You can read the entire progression quest here for yourself, and it was worth a fair amount of experience considering. Things are starting to hurt now though, the mobs are a lot harder and hit a lot harder then I’m used to. They all summon as well, making it a lot more difficult as a necromancer. I can’t kite. Since none of my characters have leveled over 80 yet, the encounters are yellow and white and it doesn’t take long before I’m face first in the dirt. We had a few tricky pulls last night but over all we did alright. I’m finding more and more use for my enchanter (it’s nice to have at least some version of slow) and still enjoying playing quite a bit.

Hope everyone else had an amazing weekend, and I’ll see you in Norrath!

The Fabled Binden Concerrentia

I spent most of yesterday questing, and completing old quests to clear out some (not a lot but some!) space in my bags that was sorely needed. Earlier on in the day I had started working on the regular Clockwork Talisman in order to one day finish off the fabled version (pictured to the right). The regular talisman used to be difficult when the planes were used for leveling up, but now that the cap is 85, well. Things are significantly easier.

Part One – involves a bottle drop from the rats in Plane of Justice, and then two drops in Plane of Innovation, a drop in Plane of Nightmare, and a drop in Plane of disease. You turn all this in, and get to move on to part two. You also receive a lesser powered necklace, although the first time I did this quest it was an upgrade to my enchanter. That was a long time ago.

Part Two – involves four drops. One from Plane of Valor, one from Plane of Torment, one from Plane of Tactics, and then finally some powder from the Tower of Solusek Ro. These drops were fairly frequent last night but like I said, way back when the planes were common grounds for leveling, it was far more difficult. As it was, I didn’t see a single other person in any one of these zones while I worked on the quest (hence my desire for old hot zones to remain hot zones). Since most of the access quests have been removed from all of these zones, and all you need now are proper levels it also makes getting this item a whole lot easier then it used to be way back when.

Part Three – probably the simplest these days since there are a lot of people in the higher planes. You need a fragment drop (none fabled for the original version) from Plane of Water, Plane of Air, Plane of Fire, and Plane of Earth. Combine all this together in a special container from the npc and ta da, you’ll end up with The Binden Concerrentia. None-fabled for now. It’s quite easy to upgrade it though – if – you happen to be around during the anniversaries.

To upgrade to the fabled version you simply need the regular version and four fabled drops from mobs in each of the planes (Earth, Water, Air, Fire) and combine it all together in a container. Since the mobs are fabled they do pack quite a punch, but are one group-able. I have this quest completed to stage two on my rogue and I still remember how difficult it was for me to get as far as I did on it. She probably won’t ever finish the first version let alone the fabled version, but I’m still glad I completed it on someone.

Aside from working on that particular quest I managed to get one of the 10th anniversary quests done, though it is a repeat from last year. The reward is a brick that gates you to plane of knowledge every 20 hours. A little excessive as far as time goes, but it was still a cute quest. You have to go to a bunch of different planes and find collectors items, and combine them in a pouch. I still wish the planes had of had more people in them. I remember killing the spiders and rock men for hours in Plane of Valor way back when, but it was (like most zones) empty when I headed there today. Ah well.

Also managed to do a little experience grinding with Ninga and Ultann, we headed to The Mechamatic Guardian zone in Dragonscale Hills to kill for a few hours. Kameeko (enchanter) is inching her way to level 80, and Minxes (necromancer) is still plugging away to 81. These levels seem to drag by (it’s been a while since I leveled) but I devoted some time to gaining aa, so I can’t expect it to be that fast. A pre-grats to Ultann who has probably hit level 85 by the time I write this, and Ninga is close behind! I hope everyone is having an amazing weekend.

Your Typical Friday Night

The group headed back to camp for the ever elusive augment that refuses to drop for us, ever. We spent a few more hours clearing place holders and a good portion of the zone before deciding that life is too short, and we moved on to greener pastures. Well, not exactly greener. More like blue.

Our first destination was Plane of Water, to camp a few more fabled. The zone is quite small, so even with two other groups it felt crowded. Plus things are on a 40 minute timer which means lots of time standing around doing nothing. The ‘regular’ fabled mobs who drop the gate necklace bit were all over the place, and they’re hard and mean. We did see the bard swarm weapon fabled a few times – but we had no bards around, so grats rot.

The highlight of the evening was Kameeko getting a clicky that transforms her into an inanimate object. It has 600 power on it and some fairly nice stats, plus it’s a clicky so how could you not adore it. At first I didn’t think it was an upgrade, but my eyes were obviously failing me and I wasn’t reading the stats proper.

I was feeling pretty cranky for the evening, purchasing a new video card wasn’t exactly on my list of things to do, and a few other (smaller) things kept it from being one of those awesome Friday nights that you have oodles of fun with. After camping water for a little while we decided to head back to Valdeholm which I am honestly just tired of. I love the idea that there are hot zones – but what I wish is that every zone that was previously a hot zone, remained. Why? Well it’s simple.

Why restrict where people are leveling. I realize you probably want to see a concentrated population for groups, but people don’t group all that much anyhow. I’d love to see options on where to group. As it is if you want a hot zone for the higher levels you’re restricted to two places, and after grinding experience in those two places you get fairly bored of it. Why not leave all the previous hot zones as hot zones, and allow the community to spread out a little bit. There are lots of places I’d love to go but it’s either too hard and above my skill level right now – or the experience is so insignificant that there’s no reason to even be there.

Games need to stop trivializing their own zones. In EQ2 I’ve talked about this with the con system, how encounters can go grey so unless you’re an avid quest person (or you have someone to mentor) there’s no real reason to travel back to any zone that you’ve already out leveled. In EQ at least the mobs still drop items if they’re ‘grey’ to you since there is no grey mobs really. Would this create issues with players camping named? Well, no one is camping those old grey zones anyhow, so maybe breath a little life back into it.

I believe today my trio is headed to Anguish to (try to) kill some mobs that drop augments. We’re not big enough (or well geared enough) to take on the named by ourselves, but there is trash that will drop handy things, plus the few brief glimpses I had of the zone were mostly of the floor, as I was dying. I haven’t been back since the necromancer got her 2.0 completed.

Which reminds me, I still want to work on Kameeko’s (enchanter) 1.0 and 1.5 – it’s a little more difficult with fabled up though. When the old world gods are all fabled versions of the original they hurt a LOT more. Other then that, I’m not sure what’s going on this weekend. Grand adventures of some sort no doubt! Monday night I’ll be playing LotRO with Kasul (supposed to be during the day but he’s switched his shift around to help out a coworker, so it will be in the evening instead) so look for some updates then.

In the mean time, happy gaming and see you in Norrath!

Back to Sverag

I love my necromancer, and one of the reasons would have to be because of swarm pets. I have a lot of them. I can call forth armies of undead to vanquish foes, and block everything from sight – like I’ve shown above. Once I was done playing LotRO it was time to head to EverQuest for a few hours before bed. We headed back to Sverag, Stronghold of Rage to continue working on getting an augment to drop for Aerrem. Because this zone is filled with conflict, well. Some times it breaks. It breaks often in fact. Last time we were there the invading force came and some how we got stuck in the middle of their conflict and then the named that we needed stopped spawning. When we headed to the zone this time the war had already occurred and the undead were in possession.

We stayed for about two hours and then the wars started again, the Drachnid were invading (I believe) so we decided to play it safe and camp out in case we were to ruin some important battle going on. Knowing my luck at least something would agro from across the zone and I’d find myself staring into the eyes of something that wanted to eat me.

I was feeling pretty tired and wanted to read for a bit before bed (which I never actually got around to doing) so I called it a night – once I cleaned out my bags of course. The blasted augment still has not dropped.

Ninga managed to ding level 84, which is fantastic. Minxes hasn’t dinged past level 80 yet, but I’ve been focusing a little bit on her aa, and I haven’t been playing her steady since I switch some times for the druid (who is at level 73 currently). Kameeko is also close to dinging 80, she’s sitting at level 69 right now and about 45% through it I believe. There are some days where I simply don’t feel like boxing, so I haven’t been playing her. Then there are days I want to gain some aa (which all gets put into her crafting currently, because I’m trying to max out all of those) and I should just simply try to level her.

Not sure what’s planned for today, but I hope everyone has a *fantastic* Friday, and stays safe.