I took yet another shot at getting the sludge in EQ this morning, and it took about five or six hours, but in the end I actually wound up with two sludge samples. The quest for the research trophy was easily completed, leaving me the spare to sell, and hopefully its rarity makes it somewhat valuable.

I figured I’d also try for the jewelcrafting trophy, and it was much easier. The hardest part of it is making grandmaster spyglasses, and I’d already done that long ago and it let me use my existing one rather than having to make a new one. The rest was just a bunch of simple combines, except for a few that needed a reinforced jewelry kit. I didn’t have one and had to do a little quest to make one, but it didn’t take too long, and before long the trophy was mine.

That’s it for crafting trophies for now though, since those are the only two I really intend to focus on anyway. And along the way I picked up enough AAs to buy both ranks of Suspended Minion. Now that my animation is actually fairly strong, getting those and Persistent Minion will let me pop it out prebuffed whenever I need it.

I figured I’d take another shot at trying to get that sludge I need in EQ for the researcher trophy, and after a few hours in Kod’Taz, it finally dropped. I turned it in to get two samples of purified sludge, which I then had to combine to create the two powders I needed for the trophy.

And with a skill at around 50 points past the trivial point of the combine, I still failed one of them. ARGH. I’ve spent too much time on this to give up now, so I went back and hunted for more sludge for a couple more hours, but with no luck.

It wasn’t a complete loss though, as I made 5 AAs and spent them on fairly fluffy stuff like Innate Metabolism.

I finished off the level and hit 76 in EQ today, though this level was fairly slow and all of the basilisks and drakes I was fighting in Sunderock have turned light blue now. The new spells at this level aren’t too exciting, except for an animation that’s supposed to be a huge improvement over the previous one (haven’t tested it yet) and an xp-increasing aura. And I also bought the group perfect invis and charm-strengthening AAs, putting me back at 0 AA points.

With a stronger charm, I think now’s the time to take a bit of a break and work a bit more on AAs, exploration, and questing for a bit. There’s still plenty of older content that I haven’t seen yet and AAs to strengthen some more.

And just out of curiosity, I popped back into HoH for a bit, and was surprised to see that the guards there are still light blue and haven’t gone green yet. They’re only worth 4-5% of an AA per kill now though, whereas I was getting a good 12-13% in Sunderock. I just need to find a good spot with monsters around the level 72-74 range for even better xp rates.

I decided that levels were more important for now in EQ, so I went ahead and hit level 74 on Friday. The only really good new spell was a new colour stun, though, and I don’t even use those as much as I did before now that I have the banishment AA.

Saturday I decided to start working on research a bit, starting with the trophy quest. The research system was overhauled a couple of times while I was gone, and involves more combines of expensive ingredients now, but most of the pieces I needed I could get just running around PoK.

Except for one… I needed a ‘sludge sample’, and the only place I could find the kind I needed was deep in the Gates of Discord areas, deeper than I had gone previously. Unfortunately, I discovered upon arriving there that absolutely everything was immune to charm. I had to resort to root-n-nuke, died a handful of times, and I spent nearly all day there without it dropping. Ugh, I’ll come back and try again later, when I have more powerful nukes…

And then yesterday I spent a lot of time back in Sunderock again, where I finally got Slave Driver Azza to spawn and drop a piece for the Charm of Lore. The stats on it are good enough now that I moved the Wanderlust Lodestone over to it and use it instead of the Silverwing charm. The main stats on it are actually slightly lower, and it has lower mana regen, but I’m capped on those already and it has higher HP/mana.

I did some more xping there as well, eventually getting into a group (though the xp actually wasn’t as good as soloing) and hitting level 75. I immediately bought Perfected Levitation, another rank in Clinging Root, and the 10th spell slot AAs, and I still have 11 left over to save for the next level. 75 is also a really nice spell level, with a new charm and group versions of clarity and haste.

Our group then went to Riftseeker’s Sanctum, an OoW-era zone I’d never been to before, and although nothing nice dropped, the xp was pretty good and I’m around a quarter of the way into 75 already.

Nothing really new to report in EQ — I’ve just been doing the same drake camp the last few days, both for xp and the webbing drops. I’m up to 30 banked AAs and 82% towards level 74 though, so I’m soon going to have to choose between whether I want to finish the level or keep grinding more AAs. There’s still a ton of AA skills to buy, but I don’t want to be stuck here much longer either…

I also have to look into working on tradeskills a bit, to get rid of the piles of components I’ve been collecting if nothing else.

I started the night in EQ by working on the Charm of Lore a bit more, turning in a dozen items from the easier-to-get spots, and getting nearly a full AA’s worth of xp. The stats on it aren’t better than my Silverwing charm yet, though (mana/hp are slightly higher, but everything else is lower).

I spent my double-xp period working on leveling, but I died thanks to bad luck on a charm break (I thought the enemy was rooted, but it wasn’t), and wound up wasting half the period running back and waiting for rez sickness to wear off. Oh well. The rest of the evening was just spent on more AAs (9 banked now) and farming drake webbing, which I’ll eventually need to raise the research skill.

Today in EQ it was mostly grinding AAs, making something like 20 of them overall (I lost count), and 8 of them were even before lunch. I spent them mainly on raising my mana regen and item mana regen cap, though I did also buy the hotkeyable Gate so it’s always available (it’s saved my bacon a few times already, when I tried some ‘experiments’…), and the crit ability for DoTs. I’m already running out of must-haves to spend it on, so perhaps next I’ll just bank a bunch of AAs for later and get back to leveling.

I wandered around the Dragons of Norrath and Depths of Darkhollow areas for a bit, but didn’t find anything worthwhile. Even though one area was a hotzone, the xp still wasn’t as good as Sunderock.

I’ve also started the quest for the Charm of Lore in Crescent Reach. This one grows in strength with the number of items off this list you turn in, but some of them are raid and instance drops, so I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to reach the maximum stats on it. Seems kind of a shame to replace my Silverwing charm so soon, but this one does have better hp/mana on it…

I finished off a small handful of other quests involving Crescent Reach and nearby areas today in EQ, but I figured it was time to take a bit of a break and explore some other games I’ve recently bought. But then later on it was right back into EQ, of course…

I did some more charm soloing in Sunderock Springs, and hit level 73 after a couple of hours, breaking 10k mana in the process. With the new spells, I had upgrades for my nuke (with a new max crit of 4230 so far), single-target clarity, a DoT, spell damage mitigation (too situational, usually not worth the peridot it costs to cast), and a point-blank AE mez.

Those were nice, but the real benefits came when I finally spent those AAs I’d been saving up. I put a rank in Clinging Root and it’s already noticeable how much less often roots get broken by nukes, I bought a rank to raise the mana regen cap from items, and I got Perfected Invisibility just for kicks. But the big one was Beguiler’s Directed Banishment, which will make it much safer to deal with charm breaks from now on. It casts quickly, and knocks the enemy back a ways and keeps them rooted long enough for me to reapply tash and charm. Ideally, I shouldn’t get hit at all during the recharm if I notice the break in time.

My mercenary also got a nice upgrade with a new healing spell that seems to be much more efficient. Before I hit 73, she would gradually fall down towards being out of mana, but now she stays nearly full in the same situations.

Now that I’ve gotten used to higher-level charm soloing, I’m tempted to pause the leveling a bit and grind out some more AAs. There’s still plenty of stuff to buy additional ranks in…