I did more exploring around the Buried Sea area today, as there’s a bit more to it than I thought. There was a camp of fire goblins on Suncrest Isle that was pretty good xp, where I’ll probably spend my double-xp periods from now on, and I found some chests along the beach on another island, in which I found:

It also turned out that I could enter the city of Katta Castrum by jumping into the big whirlpool at the center of the zone. It’s an enormous city, divided into outer areas under siege by elementals and Shissar and the inner area where the old Combine empire lives, but it’s largely empty.

I picked up a handful of tasks and did a few of them that I could do right within the city itself, but none of them were all that important. Katta Castrum has its own separate currency, but to pick up any of those it looks like I have to do the harder, group quests. I doubt there’s anything I really want to earn here though, since it would probably be quickly obsoleted once I reach the Seeds of Destruction areas.

I finished off a couple of the Blackfeather Roost quests first in EQ today, just to get them out of the task list. Then I redid the anniversary fishing quest, since it’s fairly easy and profitable (nearly 4k plat and 2 AAs for only an hour or two of work).

Then I remembered that today’s the last day for the anniversary stuff, so I figured I should at least look into some of the fabled monsters. I don’t have a good group to help with the high-end stuff, so I consulted a list to see which ones would be soloable and drop stuff that’s actually interesting.

In the end I wound up doing the fabled versions of Tserrina (Tower of Frozen Shadow) and the spider queen (Crystal Caverns) for their robes, the warlords in Shadeweaver’s Thicket and the evil eye in Lower Guk for weight-reducing bags, and a handful of others that I ran across along the way (foreman and life leech in Crystal Caverns, the Ry’gorr oracle and chief in Eastern Wastes).

While I was in Lower Guk, there was only one other person around, so I made a tour of the various named spots and wound up getting a few items from them too, including a Shiny Metallic Robe (one of the first uber items!), and a few other pieces of junk.

And then I rounded out the evening by working on baking a bit. I had a ton of Hero Parts banked away, so I made Hero Sandwiches, which required more preparation than I expected. I only succeeded on about a quarter of the combines, since it’s a high-skill recipe, but I did gain four points of baking skill. Though I’m not sure four points is enough to justify the AAs I spent on allowing it to break 200…

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.