I spent most of today in EverQuest, but this time I felt like finally leveling a bit. I headed off to Halls of Honor to see what the actual level xp is like there, and I was a bit disappointed with the movement at first, as I only got a bit less than a fifth of a blue bubble per kill, versus the 2-3 full blue bubbles I was getting for AA xp. But, it actually started to add up fairly quickly, and by the end of my stretch there I’d gained two levels, putting me at 67. I still need my 66+ spells though, and I’m not finding them in the bazaar and I’d probably need a group to get them from the OoW areas…

I was also pleased to see that the monsters in HoH remained dark blue even at 67, so I think I’ll hold the leveling there for a while and milk some more AAs out of the place. There’s still a handful of them that look important that I haven’t picked up yet, like improving chances of channeling through stuns and reducing the reuse time on Gather Mana.

I also discovered that I’d goofed up a bit — some of the monsters that I’ve been describing as stun-immune actually aren’t; I was just using the wrong stun… I had a lower-level one ready to be fired first since it casts faster, and that’s the one that I kept getting the ‘immune’ messages for. But then I noticed that the description of the second stun says “…works on creatures up to level 65.” The first stun doesn’t say anything like that, and I’d forgotten about the level restrictions, and after switching to the second stun it works on a lot more monsters now. Recovery from charm breaks should be a bit safer now.

Grinding xp in HoH was getting boring, so I struck out exploring again, this time in the Dragons of Norrath areas. They’re connected via Lavastorm, which has also undergone a map revamp (old vs new), which changed things like the positions of dungeon entrances considerably. There’s probably other new stuff there too, but I was just passing through.

It was a good thing I stopped to look at an NPC merchant though, as one of them had an Elegant Defiant Silk Robe for sale that some other player must have dumped on the merchant. I’d been looking for that robe, and it normally goes for 10K+ plat in the bazaar, but the merchant only wanted just over 2K plat for it. Sold! I can’t wear the Elegant Defiant stuff yet, but I now have almost a full set ready for when I hit level 70.

Off of Lavastorm was the Broodlands, which kind of felt like a less craggy extension of Lavastorm. I didn’t see a lot of it though, as I stumbled across a teleporter in the middle of a bunch of pillars and it took me to Thundercrest Isles. It’s an odd little place with a handful of large buildings with an Asian-ish theme, all connected together via walkways and bridges. The monsters here were a nice mix of blues and light blues, so I tried a bit of charming in the inner area. That turned out to be a really bad idea though, as a lot of wanderers started coming by and I was forced to gate out before I got too overwhelmed.