Tag: EQ

While it’s been a blast roaming through the old nostalgic areas of EQ1, there’s also something to be said for the new places. Well, new to me in any case. Lets face it, there’s lots of new places. If you were perhaps once daunted by the amount of time it takes to level (even while solo) you shouldn’t be. At least, 1-30 has flown by. One huge reason for this was because of the Serpents Spine expansion which added Crescent Reach, and the Drakkin as a playable race. Off of Crescent Reach, is Blightfire Moors, which is home to a plethora of quests, great armor upgrades, and other random goodness. While the nostalgia group as a whole tends to avoid the more ‘up to date’ areas, I’ve enjoyed exploring them on my own when I needed a little more experience, or felt like playing one of my non progression characters.

One of the quests I worked on today was a chain given to you in Crescent Reach by an npc named Akins. He stands over top of the brewers on the main floor, and he has a few tasks for you. The first one sent me into the newb area of CR, there’s an area at the far northern tip that has undead, who still con dark blue to me at level 25. They also give a lot of experience. Anyhow, it seems he needs 15 of them slain. Doing so rewards you with 7p and unlocks his next quest.

The second quest Akin decides he’s scared of the spirits that haunt CR, and so he thinks the best possible solution is of course to send you upstairs to see “what goes bump in the night” you wander upstairs, dodge past a few undead skeletons and zombie, and come across a throne in the back room of the third floor. There’s a skeleton resting on it, so of course to decide to talk to it.

Gekkdar the Last Ogre Chief says ‘Who is it that disturbs my slumber? Unless you are the [one] begone from this place of chiefs!’

You say, ‘I am the one’

Gekkdar the Last Ogre Chief says ‘Only a true heir of the Rockjaws or Thoots can [free] me from my torment. As long as the Amulet of Chieftains is mine, here I will remain. I wait here for the day that the heir comes to this place.’

You say, ‘Free you?’

Gekkdar the Last Ogre Chief says ‘Ancient magic binds me to this place. The magic of the Amulet of Chieftains must be passed from one Chief to the next. Only a true heir may take the Amulet. All others who touch the Amulet will surely die. Alas I died alone with no heir and am consigned to wait here. Now go or I shall rouse myself and you will feel my [wrath]!’

You say, ‘Your wrath?’

Gekkdar the Last Ogre Chief says ‘Do not tempt your fate little one! My patience with you is at an end. Go now or [die]!’

You say, ‘Die!’

Gekkdar the Last Ogre Chief staggers as a shadow pierces their soul.
You have slain Gekkdar the Last Ogre Chief!

You get a pretty nice ring for killing the Ogre Chief, and you also unlock the third quest to the chain, which sends you to Blightfire Moors. While you’re upstairs in that throne room, don’t forget to /open the bones behind it, and loot the amulet for a very nice charm progression quest. I’ve been having fun in EQ1, both old and new zones. Tonight is another Nostalgia meeting, and I’ve switched my necromancer to my new ‘main’, my cleric I’ll play with Lackey when he’s around. We’re headed to Solusek’s Eye which should be a lot of fun. It’s also one of the hot zones, so maybe we’ll run into someone else.

Now before I get too far into this post – I admit, that I have a few pet peeves in games. Some are pretty apparent, and some not so much. One of my very strong pet peeves, is when people sign up for an event, and then give no notice about their absence. Now wait – I understand that people have actual lives, that things come up. But when 10 other people are counting on you to be there, the least someone can do is get a hold of whomever is in charge of the event and let them know they won’t be there. That’s my one issue with Nostalgia. I know, it probably sounds harsh of me to say about something that is so casual, but it’s because it’s so casual that I vent about it. We only meet once a week. If there’s an issue with a once a week schedule, we really need to know about it so we can compensate for the missing class. Be it a tank, dps, or buffs (Aerrik, in case you’re reading this it’s NOT about you silly, you told everyone you wouldn’t be there this week!) anyhow, enough of my ranting.

Nostalgia hiked up their skirts and headed off to do some Lost Dungeon of Norrath (also known as LDoN) for the evening and wow did we have a BLAST. We split into two groups, this time with Tipa the ranger as my fearless tank. I had moved both the cleric and the necromancer to the North Ro camp, unsure of who we’d need. I do want to be playing the cleric, but the necromancer is a lot of fun as well. For the time being I’ll continue to level them both up until it comes to a time where that is no longer a viable option. I don’t have any veteran rewards on the necro, being out of /claims. In EQ, you’re limited by how many characters you can flag with veteran rewards by how long you’ve held the account.

I was expecting experience to slow down – and it did, which was great. I got two levels out of the three runs we did and ended the necro half way through 24. Was there risk? Was it hard? Well – there was certainly risk. At one point, rogueless, Tipa decided to go poke the chest at the exit of the room we stood in.

Bad idea!

In 5 seconds flat we were corpses on the ground, having been hit with an 88 point a tick dot. OUCH! We laughed and teased Tipa endlessly over it, walked back to our instance from PoK (Plane of Knowledge) and picked up where we left off. Gozad also had an ‘incident’ with the floor, the poor monk tripped, or so I heard, and was crushed by a barrage of undead. Or something.

We had a blast. It was so great. We were also fairly lucky in our drops. We walked away with quite a bit of coin, and THREE LoN (Legends of Norrath) drops. One starter deck, one booster deck (which sells for 45,000p) and one regular card. We also had two augments drop (which are fairly common for LDoN) and we of course gained points with the North Ro camp. Fantastic. I honestly had such a good time. The key point? Having a static group of people to do this with. It has made all the difference in the world.

Nostalgia the guild will be putting together a Tuesday group (I won’t be apart of that one as it’s one of my Vanguard days and honestly one is enough for me!) so if anyone is interested in being TRULY old-school in their EQ1 leveling, be sure to check out the forums for more details and to sign up. I believe Blackburrow is the goal for this Tuesday, with a maximum of level 10 to start the night off.

One thing I’ve missed about EQ1 (having played other games) is actually running all over to collect my spells. I’ve neglected them since level 20 or so – unsure of when I’d be playing the necromancer next and not really NEEDING any of my spells. There’s no automatic way to obtain them in EQ1, and you actually have to look up a spell list and typically write out what you need and who sells it and how you can get it. It’s fantastic. Odd thing for me to say? Perhaps. It was just one of those small things that gave the game character though. In EQ2 you automatically get all your spells from 1-50, and then after that you simply look up on broker or on a class merchant for 51-80 or have a player craft them all for you. There’s no skills in multiple zones, no real reason NOT to have any of your spells aside from not seeing it for sale on broker and not wanting to bother with a lower version of it. In EQ1 it’s quite common to hear “Oh, I haven’t gotten that yet, it’s research only” or “Oh, I have to go all the way to Shadowhaven for that and they won’t sell to me yet” and various other reasons for not having particular spells. It’s always fun to hum and haw over which spells you NEED and can afford to buy, and which ones are expendables.

Next week Nostalgia is headed to Solusek’s Eye which is just going to be a hoot I can tell. It’s still not too late to join up if you’d like (and can make the Fridays at 7pm EST schedule – though we are recruiting anyone who just wants to play EQ1 and reminisce about the good ‘ol days) just visit the forums and introduce yourself. We could use a second tank for group cool, and an enchanter. Our level cap for this week is 25, so anything between 20-25 would be perfect.

Slackey Lackey happened to be working from home yesterday, and what fun would that be if he didn’t sneak in a little time to play EQ1? So it was that we tried to come up with some place new to get experience. Every time you gain a level, SOE sends you a little message about where you should go next. At level 20 it was suggested we go to North / South Ro. Well, we made our way over there – and the majority of both zones were gray. What wasn’t gray was red (like sand giants). The zone itself reminded me way too much of EQ2 and the funny thing is I’d never actually made the connection between Sinking Sands (EQ2) and the EQ1 zones. I guess it was easier to think about it once I was actually there. I know, EQ1 came first, but I tend to still work backwards, as I’ve actually played EQ2 longer then EQ1.

So after wandering around encountering very few dark blues, lots of gray, and a few greens, we decided to head to the zone suggested at 21 (which was Lackey’s level) and I can’t remember what it was now but we were headed to the Gunthak stone to get there. Along the way I stopped and looked at the Overthere stone. Hmm. For some reason I vaguely remembered power leveling (and just plain leveling) there from 20-30. Could it be?

Zoning in proved to be two fold. If we headed west (where the “ramp” was a typical camp) things were quickly red, but if we went east, things were dark blue. Perfect!

It wasn’t long before we’d both gained a few levels, and were sitting on 22. By that time many a cockatrice, sarnak, and rhino fell to our pets, and Lackey said he had to get back to work (didn’t leveling count?) so we gated back to PoK in preparation of getting our spells some time in the future. Zones may have changed – but there are a good many more that have not. Everything in OT was exactly as I remembered it except a sever lack of people. The entire time we were the only two there. Not that I expected anything less at 9am on a Wednesday.

I’m looking forward to playing my cleric on our LDoN Friday, it should be fun. She’s been idling away unplayed at the level cap (20) for this week. I meant to play a little with my shadow knight but yesterday just couldn’t get into it. I was also contemplating getting my jewel crafting on Kameeko to cap – but I need to sit my druid in Rujarkian Hills so she can forage geodes. Velium geode bracelets cap out at 302 and that’s plenty high for me to get the last points I need. AOC is looming closer and I’m not exactly worried that it will draw people away from their current mmo’s on a permanent basis – I think it will become a niche game once the initial frenzy dies down. I’ve still got very little interest or reason to want to play it, though I do keep up with what everyone else thinks about the game.

Nostalgia the guild has had it’s issues with GM’s over the course of the two weeks we’ve been active. However, in my own personal experience, they’re still pretty damn fantastic. In order to play in the group (before I’d obtained station access) I had to delete a character of mine – and unthinkingly I deleted a 44 shadow knight named Satia, and a 13 wizard named Nukette. A few days later I realized that Nukette was actually my one true twink – decked out with gear from Greig himself. Not many level 13’s can say that. She’s wearing the Geomantic Fingers of Focus which my cleric at the time also managed to find. Grieg’s End is another one of those zones that I just absolutely love. I killed Grieg with my beastlord friend any time we found him up, and we leveled many many an alt in the zone. If I recall, we had the wizard sacrifice herself, and then dragged her corpse to the corpse of Grieg and rez’d her there so she could loot. In fact when I logged her in, after being restored, she was still in GE. It’s been years.

My shadow knight was also restored – for which I am very happy. The GM’s are under no obligation to restore characters to me, but they were prompt and courteous  (as was I) and I’m glad for the help.

I haven’t played a shadow knight in a long time. I typically hate tanks. They have spells though, and a pet, and well hey she looks pretty good too. Today I planned on taking her through some of the newer quests level 20-40 just to see how much I remember about playing her.

Last night, Lackey (20 Magician), Aerrik (19 Shaman), Spuc (17 Monk), and myself (20 Necromancer) decided we’d head to Upper Guk to meander around and kill things. We had an absolute blast on vent making crude jokes (Lackey summoned his Bristlebane Jester who shrunk a few of us and made a few others grow..) and just generally having a good time. We were going to attempt to head to Lower Guk – but things very quickly turned from grey to red inside Upper as it was, and we decided other wise. A few levels later and a lot of laughs, we called it a night and everyone (except the monk) gated out – leaving the monk to sacrifice himself to get a rez later. I would have felt badly, except that it was his choice and at these levels the exp loss is not so bad (plus, he’d just get a rez at the guild lobby later). We didn’t get any useful loot, but it was still a lot of fun to wander around accidentally pulling groups of three or four mobs.

Urtog from our Nostalgia group moved his main warrior over to Luclin, and ever since has been hell bent on getting his epic 1.0 completed. Who can blame him? It’s an epitome of EQ1-ness, and was (and still is to a few) a major milestone. Over time though not many people still raid the 1.0’s, a lot of the encounters needed for various classes are on a permanent camped basis, farmed for their drops because a lot can be solo’d / duo’d / boxed.

So when he set forth the idea to go after his Chardok piece, which happened to come from the Queen, of course I jumped at the chance. Tipa would (again) be our fearless leader – and because of sheer uberness was our tank, our dps, and our healer. Urtog was our corpse clearer, and I was our (some what fuddled) navigator and lock-pickerer on my rogue, Invis Abletomobs. Basically the plan was, let Tipa do all the work. I kid you not. That woman is UBER. It helps, being decked out the way her character is. I’ve never gotten into that aspect of EQ1 before, I never really had the opportunity since I left for EQ2. It’s an interesting sight to see that’s for sure.

Anyhow, I scouted ahead (I love Shroud of Stealth, which is an aa my rogue has that lets her pass by things unaware that would typically see) and checked to see if the mobs were up – which they were. I then promptly set off a trap and died.

Woot. Wouldn’t be a Chardok run (hey, some mobs were still con’ing dark blue to me at level 70) if I didn’t die. So I wandered back to Chardok while Tipa set out clearing her and Urtog’s path with her mighty melee cleric ways. It was fun. She’d turn a corner, grab 20 or so mobs, and a few minutes later a sad little pile of corpses lay at her feet. Urtog and I grabbed our pom poms and acted as personal cheerleaders.

Our one issue was that none of us could snare, and the final mob of every encounter would make a beeline for their furthest friend which would in turn bring 20 of their furthest friends and before too long we’d have another dead party at our feet. It was a LOT of fun though. It’s great playing the whole lowbie nostalgia bit, but some times, you just want to wander around and play those old characters you have. I hadn’t touched my rough in three years. I didn’t even remember how to apply poisons, and the bazaar doesn’t have a search field to buy any. Looks like I’ll have to make some (some how).

So after a bit of time clearing, we downed both the Overking, and the Queen. Those two specific encounters were probably easier then anything else we’d fought that night. The Queen’s bard AoE still hurt me and Urtog real bad while Tipa stood there saying “She has an AoE? It hurts?” not feeling a thing. Lucky Halfling. In other fantastic news, we got our guild tag, FINALLY. Pictures of our guild hall to follow in another post. Just watch out for the healing pool, I hear some Vah shir have been using it as a litter box.