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.

I hit level 77 in EQ fairly quickly today, and the new spells are pretty decent, with upgrades to tash, haste, and a new charm. I also bought upgrades to the Clinging Root and Mez Mastery AAs, putting me back down at 14 AA points.

The exp is still pretty good at the fire goblin camp, so I’m going to have to decide whether to keep exping there, or start exploring a bit more, with the new charm opening up more possibilities. Either way, I think I’ll first max out my AAs again before hitting level 78, while the xp is still good.

I started leveling again in EQ tonight, but it’s going more slowly than expected, and after a couple hours I only gained about 26%, putting me 59% of the way to 77. I guess it’s going to take me a few more days…

I got bored of the exping though, so I figured I should actually spend some of that money I’ve been saving up and worked on jewelcrafting for a bit afterwards. I quickly got up to 282 with vendor gem combinations, but after that you need dropped gems. Fortunately, since the server had been up for quite a while, the ones I needed were readily available on random vendors, with a bit of searching.

It’s getting expensive, though. After spending about 40k plat (knocking me down to 70k left in the bank), I’m up to 288 skill now. Those last 12 points are going to be annoying, since at this point all of the gems and bars are quite expensive, the salvage skill doesn’t kick in quite as often as I’d like, and you can easily chew through 5-10k plat without a single skill gain. I think I’ll leave it at here for now…

I discovered tonight that the flurry ability I bought yesterday doesn’t actually work for charmed pets like I assumed it would. Oh well, that’s a bunch of ranks I don’t need to buy into any further…

Instead I picked up another rank of Shield Block and the other banishment ability, that acts in a cone effect. The single-target one is the preferred one for charming, but the cone one should be useful in emergencies when there are multiple enemies after me in a bad charm break. With my AA options cut a bit short by the above discovery, I think at this point I’m going to bank the usual 30 AAs and get back to leveling, as the more useful AAs I still want won’t be available until the next few levels.

I also finally hit 100,000 plat in the bank tonight. Soon I’ll have to choose between whether I want to keep saving it for spells and other items later on, or splurge it all on the fastest mount type.

I spent a little while longer than I intended working on more AAs in EQ. With the dual-wielding trick, I’m earning them more quickly than ever before at the fire goblin camp, so I may as well milk them while I can, and I’ve bought some more like innate charm resistance (will supposedly be important in the Seeds of Destruction areas) and the flurry ability for my pet. I can usually earn enough AAs to buy a rank of something each day, so although the camp is a bit repetitive, it doesn’t really feel like any days are entirely wasted. It’s pretty good cash too, with the deepwater gem and plat drops.

Though I’ve just been grinding AAs in EQ lately, I made two big discoveries recently.

First, the anniversary quests aren’t gone yet, even though the event has ended. This means I can keep doing at least the fishing one, for a pretty good amount of cash and a couple AAs for an hour or so’s work. I’m not sure if this is intentional or if it’s just because the servers haven’t been rebooted yet, so I’ll have to do it whenever possible in case it vanishes soon.

And I also remembered that I can give charmed pets weapons to make them dual-wield. This resulted in a huge increase in DPS when I tried it out on the fire goblins in Buried Sea, and now I can make 4-5 AAs per Lesson period instead of 3. It’s also riskier when charm breaks, of course, so I also have to be a lot more careful.

And speaking of AAs, I’ve bought up all of the ranks of Jewelcraft Mastery and Salvage, and one rank of the research mastery AA as well. I think I’ll finish off that one (15 more AAs to get the next two ranks), just so the important tradeskill AAs are completely over and done with, and then get back to leveling.