Today was mainly spent questing in EQ, where I did one of the older anniversary quests that gave me an exp bonus potion, and a few more of the Wanderlust tasks in Crescent Reach, which improves the stats on an augment I got from them.

I spent the usual daily xp bonus period in HoH, but afterwards I did a bit of charming in Plane of Tactics as well, just to test it out. First impressions are good, and although the ogres there are intimidatingly huge, charm seemed to stick really well on them. I’d have to do more testing to see if the xp there is actually any better, but I managed to gain another 7% or so there and ended the day 40% into level 70.

Unfortunately I’ve just realized that although I can start buying spells at level 71, I won’t really get some of the more useful ones like charm and mez until 72. Argh…

As planned, I spent today in EQ getting the Silverwing ring and belt items again, but I gave up on the cloak after a while as it was starting to get boring. It was also around that time that I realized I’d forgotten about the mana regen cap — apparently the default cap for regen from items is only 15, and so far I have from my items a total of…39. So any further regen isn’t really going to do me any good anyway until I get a lot more of the cap-raising AAs.

I also spent some time working on my epic 1.5 weapon, by doing the preparatory step of collecting a bunch of pages and turning them in. I probably won’t be able to do anything else on it anytime soon since it involves some fairly tough fights.

And although I managed to avoid HoH for almost all of level 69, I returned there just to burn off my daily double-xp period, and hit level 70. I still don’t have any other new spells, but I can now wear all the elegant defiant silk items I’d been saving up, giving me boosts of over 600 health and mana. Not too shabby.

I’m only getting 4% per clearing of the HoH basements now, but I’m only one level away from finally being able to buy spells again, so perhaps I just need to grit my teeth and put up with it for just a little longer. Even the highest level monsters I can charm con light blue to me now, without that level 68 charm spell.

I soldiered on and finished off the Silverwing quests in EQ tonight, netting me this charm, which is a significant upgrade from my old one. The only annoying part was a long stretch in Trakanon’s Teeth where the piece I needed just did not want to drop.

Ironically, getting that charm made my stats worse overall, since I had to combine all of the previous Silverwing items to make it. In particular, I was getting 12 points of mana regen from the other Silverwing items before, and afterwards I only got 5 from the charm. But, now I can go back and remake all those items again, and get a total of 17 points of regen, and I’ve already regained the earring from HoH.

That’ll probably be my goal for tomorrow, and with luck I should also hit 70 and be able to wear all the Elegant Defiant Silk armour I’ve saved up.

On a whim, I took another stab at the Silverwing quests tonight instead of doing HoH for the zillionth time, and actually managed to find some of the pieces fairly quickly. After running around Droga, Noble’s Causeway, The Deep, and Velketor’s for a while, I had three more pieces: the belt, cloak, and mask. The belt and cloak were even decent upgrades, which is going to make giving them up to make the charm even more difficult…

I also ran across an old friend from the very early EQ days, when I had a small, regular group I played with a lot. Looks like the mercs are bringing back even more people.

The EQ devs had a bit of fun today by changing the names of all of the classes in-game. Necros became ‘n3cr0’s, clerics became Rezbots, rangers became Corpses, and my enchanter became, well, a Smartypants.

I just barely made it to level 69 tonight, though it took pretty much all evening, so it’s going to take more than a single day for further levels… I seem to get 5% of a level per basement clearing now (though I was forced to leave before collecting much data), in which case it’ll take 20 clearings to get to level 70, which would take nearly seven hours at three clearings per hour (spawn time is about 20 minutes).

Argh, I wrote up a big, long post about EQ tonight, but it got eaten when I hit the Publish button. I’m not retyping it all, so in brief:

– finished anniversary quests, got shiny collapsible roboboar
– found elaborate defiant silk pantaloons for much cheaper than usual in bazaar, important for spell haste to ensure charms land before stun wears off
– 20 AAs banked now, back to leveling, sick of HoH but it’s the only safe, reliable spot I know of for now

I only have one more EQ anniversary event to go now, after a couple more delivery quests and following the party machine, and I couldn’t do it today only because it was on some shared timer with other ones, so I can’t even start it until tomorrow. I figured I’d work on the Silverwing quests a bit more instead, but after spending a while in Droga trying to get a piece to drop, I’m starting to wonder if it’s even worth it and if I might be better off waiting for a higher-level item instead if it’s going to take so much time. There are certainly charms with better total stat bonuses, but that 5 points of mana regen is so tempting…

By this point I had 30 banked AAs, so I spent a few, primarily on Natural Durability (giving me over 600 more hp), the shield block ability, and finally getting critical hits for my spells. It’s only a 2% chance of a crit for now, but I managed to fire one off before too long. Direct damage isn’t really an enchanter’s forte, but it only cost 2 points. I’m down to 12 banked AAs now, but there isn’t really anything urgent to spend them on, so I should get back to leveling soon.

Today was spent on more of the anniversary quests in EQ, of course, this time involving various tradeskills, a bunch of fishing, spreading disease, and making it rain in various zones. I even had to go to a few of the new areas I haven’t been in before, but I’ll have to go back later for a closer look. The fishing quest in particular gave me a pretty good chunk of plat and a couple AAs as a reward, so I might have to repeat that one…

A lot of the quests wind up taking me to or through a lot of the same zones, which makes it tempting to combine them and work on some simultaneously, but that’ll probably make things a bit too complicated to keep track of. And I’m almost done anyway.

And I also got my monk to 48, mainly just so he could start wearing some of the Intricate Defiant Leather armour, so it doesn’t eat up bank space. I had a bit of trouble finding a good zone at first, but settled on the Goru’kar Mesa, where he and his merc could plow through light blues pretty much nonstop.

I knocked off another three of the anniversary quests in EQ tonight, including another series of kill-equal-level-monsters, one where I had to plant seeds in various zones, and another where I had to set fires in more zones. They’re certainly taking me around to places I haven’t been in quite a while.

At this rate it looks like I should be able to complete all of the quests, so that roboboar will soon be mine…