I took a bit of a break from Mass Effect tonight to pop back into EQ2. I’d been meaning to do a bit more in it anyway, but the pressing need actually came from the player housing that it has — I was worried that I was about to fall behind on the payments needed to maintain your house. It turned out I was down to 7 days left on my current upkeep, and only had enough cash on me to extend it by one more week.

So, I needed to make some money, and figured I’d pick up some while continuing along the usual quest chains. I finished off one last quest in the Peat Bog, picked up a bunch of other quests in Qeynos, and then stumbled into the Down Below, where I did some simple item collection while getting lost in the extensive tunnels. I then found my way to The Caves, where there was another batch of quests to be picked up, and left off there for the day. I made enough money to stave off getting evicted for another five weeks, at least.

I only just realized today that when I target an enemy, I can see which other ones are ‘linked’ to it by seeing targeting circles at their feet. That’ll help greatly compared to EQ1, where you had to eyeball distances between enemies, estimate whether they’re in assist range or not, and remember which enemy types are social with each other.

Continuing on in EQ2, I explored a few more of the game systems.

The banks are much like EQ1’s, except for holding fewer bags. In fact, space in general is at more of a premium than I’m used to, and most of my packs so far are only 4-slot. While there I also found out how to get my house and set up items within it, though it’s pretty bare at the moment. It comes with a convenient access point to the EQ2 equivalent to the auction house, at least.

I also did the crafting tutorial quests while running around the Peat Bog and finishing off the other quests for that area. Crafting involves harvesting materials from a variety of sources (bushes, logs, rocks, etc.) and then combining them at the appropriate crafting station. That’s fairly similar to other games, but the one big difference is that while performing the crafting, you have to play a little minigame where you have to keep the item’s durability rating up while reacting to various flaw events that pop up while the item is being crafted. If you fail to respond with the appropriate hotkey, the item’s durability can suffer, increasing the chance of failure, and you can even take damage. It definitely makes it a lot more interesting than the usual sit-n-wait systems.

Next up, I need to finish off one last quest in the Peat Bog and then start nosing around the rest of Qeynos for more quests…

As if I haven’t wasted enough of my life in MMOs yet, I couldn’t resist picking up EQ2 this weekend. Mainly because it was only $10 on Steam for the entire latest bundle, and I figured I should at least satisfy my curiosity for that price, even if I don’t stick around past the free month.

The intro video was pretty cheesy, but I guess this was from around the “It’s time to slay the dragon!” era of terrible EQ marketing. Character creation drops racial restrictions on classes, so I took a kitty illusionist, with a home city of Qeynos.

A lot of the mechanics were instantly familiar, but the one big change is in how quests are handled. They’re voiced, and follow a select-your-response interactive menu instead of using keywords, and a lot more stuff is automatically tracked. It’s especially nice how quest items are automatically picked up and held separately from your regular inventory, so there’s no wasted space on them.

Combat is also more WoW-like, and introduces something called “heroic opportunities”, which sound complicated though I haven’t bothered to look into them much for now. I could chain-cast spells in the middle of combat, and mana regens fast enough that there’s little downtime (at least for now).

So far I’ve just finished the tutorial area and picked up a few starting quests in Qeynos. I still have to look into things like crafting and diplomacy.

Last night I took a bit of a break from EQ by playing…EQ. I’ve been saving up bits of equipment picked up along the way for some of my alt characters, and I figured I’d get away from spell-slinging for a while and played my kitty Berserker.

Unfortunately he’s only level 10 so far, and melee is still fairly boring at the low levels, since there aren’t very many special attacks yet. I took a healer merc, but he doesn’t need all that much healing even against yellow opponents, so I should probably switch over to a tank merc just for the extra DPS, to make leveling faster.

I’m not sure how much I’ll actually play him, or if I might switch over to my SK or mage instead, but it’ll be a nice diversion once in a while.

Today in EQ, I remembered that there are a few spells I hadn’t gotten yet, so I first went and got the Drakkin illusion spell from a fairly quick, simple quest. Upon evaluating the others though, I opted to skip them, since there’ll be higher-level versions coming up fairly quickly.

I went and explored the Prophecy of Ro zones for a little bit, but there wasn’t really much to explore. They’re pretty, but boring, from another one of the expansions that focuses mainly on group instance missions and little else. I then went and checked out the Loping Plains zone from the Secrets of Faydwer expansion. There’s a lot more potential there, with a bunch of potentially-soloable quests and blue-con critters to kill, though I’ll have to do some more testing.

As expected, I hit level 78 fairly quickly in EQ today, giving me a Clarity spell with a big boost, new nuke and DoT spells, and another rank of the Total Domination skill. And while xping I even got some equipment upgrades, with new ranged slot and weapon items. I was a bit reluctant to switch away from my epic weapon, but the stats on this one are just so much better.

I got myself back up to 30 AAs, also putting me 20% into the level, and I think it’s time I worked on some quests and explored a bit. The fire goblin camp is still good xp, but I need something different to do…

To mix things up a bit, I worked on doing the tasks for a different island in the Buried Sea in EQ today, focusing on the siren island. Most of them were fairly easy except for the Siren Hair one, which needed a fairly rare drop. Plus, fighting the sirens is annoying since they have a huge aggro radius, the terrain on their island causes weird pathing, and they’re highly resistant, so I had to go charm a pet from a different island. In the end I got all three fingerbone pieces from the island’s quests though.

These quests are kind of annoying in how you have to do them, though. The fingerbone rewards aren’t unlocked until you do a couple other quests on each island, and the available rewards are set at the time you take the quest, so you can’t simply pick up all of the quests for an island and then go do them all. You have to take one, go do it, turn it in, pick up the next one, go do it, etc., which gets annoying when you have to zone back and forth with the Barren Coast, or you pick up pieces for other quests that go to waste because they’re not counted because you couldn’t start that one yet.

I then spent most of the rest of the day xping in the usual spot, though I did die for the first time at that camp. I had charmed Lutzan, the named goblin, and on one charm break he ran up and hit me while I was sitting, and I hit the button to stand up at just the wrong moment, making me sit back down again, and he hit me sitting down again. Getting hit when you’re sitting down always does max damage…

Oh well, I’m 85% of the way towards level 78 now, and should easily get it fairly quickly tomorrow. That’ll be a nice level since I’ll have another rank of the charm strengthening skill and will still be able to charm nearly anything blue to me.

Just more exping in EQ tonight, with the slight twist that the named goblin spawned at the camp and I realized I could use my new charm spell on him. Named critters usually aren’t good for charming since they’re often unrootable or can summon you, which makes charm breaks a pain, but this guy doesn’t have either ability. Hasted and dual-wielding, he puts out a lot more damage than the normal goblins around there (max damage of 908 versus 639), and fights went much more quickly and I could clear the entire camp instead of having to leave a few untouched each spawn cycle.

Of course, charm breaks were also more dangerous since he hits so much harder, so I had to be extra careful about keeping him away from me and watching the remaining charm duration, but I haven’t died to him yet. In fact, I’m surprised I haven’t died at all at the goblin camp yet, even though I did a handful of times at the safer Sunderock camps.