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…

I started off my new era of charm soloing in Sunderock Springs, where there were some level 70 drakes and basilisks that were quite charmable. I quickly learned to get back into the habit of keeping the target rooted whenever possible, though; I’d been able to get away with not doing so back in HoH, but these monsters hit for over 800 damage, so I don’t want two of them on me at once. I got chased away a few times and died once, before getting the hang of it.

I also did some quests in the zone, involving killing some catapults and their operators and some drakes by a geyser. After I got a little tired of hanging around here, I went back and did some more of the Wanderlust exploration quests (my Wanderlust aug has fairly decent stats now, with 11 to each stat), and finished off a couple loose end quests in Blackfeather Roost, from some previous time I’d revisited EQ.

The xp per kill is definitely better now that I can kill higher-level monsters again, though it takes longer to kill each one, too. I can get about 14% of a level in the daily double-xp period, which isn’t really that great, but I can fight in a lot more new places now, to keep things interesting.

The first thing I did in EQ today was switch mercenaries, from a Tier III Apprentice healer to a Tier I Journeyman healer. It costs about three times as much to maintain, but money hasn’t been a problem so far. Since it’s only Tier I (higher Journeyman tiers have to be unlocked) there’s a chance it might run from combat when it shouldn’t, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The main reason for the switch was because I’ll probably need better healing when I start charm soloing higher-level monsters again, since they’ll hit a lot harder. The previous merc also had a bad habit of overhealing me with a big heal-over-time, when I only needed a small top-off, wasting a lot of mana. The Journeyman merc has more ‘modes’ to choose from, and…unfortunately she still overheals that way in the ‘efficient’ mode. But she should still be better overall, and uses the Rk II versions of spells.

And then I hit level 72. I got my all-important new mez and charm spells, a new haste (the new ones aren’t actually any faster, but add other stats instead), a new lull, and a new tash. I was still missing a colour stun, so I broke down and bought the level 69 one from the bazaar, since I don’t get the next one of those until level 74 and it’s somewhat essential to my charming strategy.

Didn’t have time tonight to actually go play with my new toys, but there’s the whole long weekend to go…

Another day, another 40% closer to level 72…

It was a fairly boring night in EQ, with some more grinding in HoH putting me one third of the way towards 72. I did however note for the first time that I’ve broken 10k health when fully buffed, thanks to my merc’s latest spells. Not bad considering that I had about 5k when I returned to EQ.

I spent more time charm soloing in Plane of Tactics in EQ tonight, and the xp was decent overall, though I couldn’t say for certain that it was better than HoH. It was certainly more interesting though, as I worked my way through the tunnels rather than sitting still. I even killed the Diaku Supplier once, though the loot was rather useless compared to Defiant armour. The Fabled Diaku Armorer popped as well, but at level 80-something I had to steer clear of him.

The one annoying part was that occasionally the oracles would land a slow on my charmed pet, rendering him useless for a few minutes, and there wasn’t always another one I could switch to. Clerics can normally cure the slow, but I guess the mercenary isn’t that smart… The slows annoyed me enough that I left Tactics when I was at 97% xp and I ground out the last little bit back in HoH, hitting level 71.

I picked up my new spells from the bixie impostor in Stone Hive, but it’s not really an impressive set at that level. Two runes, a shielding upgrade, a cripple, and an animation. Nothing that really enhances my killing power much, though the animation will be nice for low-level questing and farming, but I won’t get the real meat like charm and mez until 72. Clearing the HoH basements is down to 3% per wave now…