I figured I’d better get around to doing those anniversary quests in EQ, and fortunately there’s a handy guide available, so I started doing them roughly in order (aside from the party machine one, which will take a while since it moves from zone to zone and I have to catch it in all of them).

I managed to get four of them done tonight, two of which were fairly simple and only involved talking to people and using items on them, but the other two involved fights against a series of equal-level enemies in areas where I couldn’t effectively charm, so I wound up having to tediously root-n-nuke my way through them. And it looks like the next one is going to be more of the same… At least having the cleric henchman makes them even possible.

I had 18 AAs banked by the end of the night, but then I blew 15 of them at once in order to get the AA for the pet /hold command. Unfortunately it’s not really what I thought it would be, so that might have been a waste. Oh well…

I headed back to Noble’s Causeway in EQ tonight, but with a particular goal in mind this time: working on the Silverwing quests. I’d picked up a glowing shard in HoH, and the other part of the quest comes from here.

I found an area where there were monsters known to drop the band I needed, but charming them was a bit tougher this time around, since in this expansion they reduced the DPS on charmed monsters (normally they’d hit for over 400, but only hit for 241 when charmed), and they were fairly magic resistant, so charm broke a lot more often. I died once soon after arriving when I got an unlucky charm break just as some spawns were repopping and mezzes were fading.

It was a good spot though, since I could kill the packmaster when it spawned as well, and it can drop the runes needed for the 66-68 spells. I only got one rune, which I turned in to get a, uh, Rune spell, but it’s better than nothing. I might have to come back here and see if I can at least get the 68 charm spell. And I finally got the Silverwing Band I needed, and completed the quest to get a really nice ring that was a substantial upgrade. There are a bunch of other lower-level quests I can do in the same line and can combine them all to get a nice charm, as well, so I’ll have to try that sometime (though that means I’d have to redo this quest to get this ring back).

I spent the rest of the evening back in HoH to burn off my xp bonus period, and I now have over 200 total AAs, with 12 banked right now.

(And speaking of spells, I’m starting to buy some higher-level ones when I see them in the bazaar for cheaper than they’d cost at vendors. It’s just the 66-70 ones that remain elusive since very few people would have spares of them with the way the rune turn-ins work.)

I spent most of today in EverQuest, but this time I felt like finally leveling a bit. I headed off to Halls of Honor to see what the actual level xp is like there, and I was a bit disappointed with the movement at first, as I only got a bit less than a fifth of a blue bubble per kill, versus the 2-3 full blue bubbles I was getting for AA xp. But, it actually started to add up fairly quickly, and by the end of my stretch there I’d gained two levels, putting me at 67. I still need my 66+ spells though, and I’m not finding them in the bazaar and I’d probably need a group to get them from the OoW areas…

I was also pleased to see that the monsters in HoH remained dark blue even at 67, so I think I’ll hold the leveling there for a while and milk some more AAs out of the place. There’s still a handful of them that look important that I haven’t picked up yet, like improving chances of channeling through stuns and reducing the reuse time on Gather Mana.

I also discovered that I’d goofed up a bit — some of the monsters that I’ve been describing as stun-immune actually aren’t; I was just using the wrong stun… I had a lower-level one ready to be fired first since it casts faster, and that’s the one that I kept getting the ‘immune’ messages for. But then I noticed that the description of the second stun says “…works on creatures up to level 65.” The first stun doesn’t say anything like that, and I’d forgotten about the level restrictions, and after switching to the second stun it works on a lot more monsters now. Recovery from charm breaks should be a bit safer now.

Grinding xp in HoH was getting boring, so I struck out exploring again, this time in the Dragons of Norrath areas. They’re connected via Lavastorm, which has also undergone a map revamp (old vs new), which changed things like the positions of dungeon entrances considerably. There’s probably other new stuff there too, but I was just passing through.

It was a good thing I stopped to look at an NPC merchant though, as one of them had an Elegant Defiant Silk Robe for sale that some other player must have dumped on the merchant. I’d been looking for that robe, and it normally goes for 10K+ plat in the bazaar, but the merchant only wanted just over 2K plat for it. Sold! I can’t wear the Elegant Defiant stuff yet, but I now have almost a full set ready for when I hit level 70.

Off of Lavastorm was the Broodlands, which kind of felt like a less craggy extension of Lavastorm. I didn’t see a lot of it though, as I stumbled across a teleporter in the middle of a bunch of pillars and it took me to Thundercrest Isles. It’s an odd little place with a handful of large buildings with an Asian-ish theme, all connected together via walkways and bridges. The monsters here were a nice mix of blues and light blues, so I tried a bit of charming in the inner area. That turned out to be a really bad idea though, as a lot of wanderers started coming by and I was forced to gate out before I got too overwhelmed.

The EverQuest updates have been pretty sparse since lately I’d only been watching the bazaar, looking for good deals on new equipment. I think I’ve milked it long enough though, so tonight I got back to some actual adventuring.

It was the Omens of War expansion’s turn, so I headed to Dranik’s Scar first, but it’s way too low-level and rather plain-looking. Connected to it is Noble’s Causeway, which was a bunch of long, winding paths with an upper and lower part. There were plenty of blue-con murkgliders there, and I charm-soloed them for a little while, but again they have the annoying stun immunity.

I moved on to Wall of Slaughter, a big circular area split in half by a wall in the middle, and a much better job at attempting to portray ominous architecture. My attempt to charm-solo some of the wanderers there ended horribly though, when I got overrun. There were just too many wanderers in that area, and of course they’re all stun-immune as well.

I couldn’t enter one connected zone, and the other led to the Muramite Proving Grounds, which was another maze of corridors that was filled with yellow and red cons, so that’s as deep as I dared go. I went back to WoS and got killed on another charm attempt thanks to them summoning, and I think that’s all I’ll try for now. I’m still missing my level 66-70 spells that drop here, though, so I may have to buy those on the bazaar.

I wound up going back to Halls of Honor and did some charm-soloing there for a while. It’s nice and easy compared to most other areas, and it didn’t take long to get 5 AAs there, though it gets dull after a while. I bought the last two points of Innate Enlightenment, and I’m still capped on INT, but it’s probably time to focus on other AAs for now, though. I also found an earring there that was a good upgrade for me and that must be a new item, since its stats are way too good for that era.

I briefly popped into EQ tonight and did a bit of charm soloing in Barundi, but it turned out to be another area where they’re immune to stuns and mitigate slows, and it wasn’t long before an unlucky charm break led to my demise again (I managed to earn 1 AA point, at least). I didn’t realize there was a zone line nearby that would have made things a lot safer, but I’m not sure I’d want to stick around there anyway.

I stuck my nose into the nearby Ferubi zone, but according to the map it was nothing but a huge series of corridors, and they could see through invis, so that place was right out. The other connected zone was Riwwi, which was another small hub of light blue monsters, and looped back around to Qinimi.

That’s really about it for how far into Gates of Discord I can get without a group or raid, and it’s just not a popular area anymore — it was the newest expansion area when I last played, but now it’s an “old” region that nobody goes to anymore. Barundi is about the only decent charm soloing spot in it, but it’s too much hassle for too little reward.

Next up will be the Omens of War areas, most likely. I’m not expecting any miracles though, since it’s really the other half of Gates of Discord.

Today I finally set off to explore more in EQ, and I figured I’d pick up where I left off a long time ago, in the Gates of Discord areas. There’s supposed to be a giant ship you can take from the Nedaria’s Landing zone, but after waiting a while I guessed that the boats are broken yet again and used the Magus nearby to teleport to it instead.

On the ship I discovered some quests for unlocking some expansion-specific parts of tradeskills, and went through the necessary intro steps for blacksmithing and jewelcrafting, but left it at that since it gets pretty tedious. I did spend a little while working on raising jewelcrafting a bit further, as apparently the cap has been raised to 300 now (was 250 before), and managed to gain 8 points. That cost me about a thousand plat in materials though, and I decided to leave it at that. There were some progression quests as well, but I’ll have to leave those for now since they all pretty much require groups or raids.

Moving on, the zone of Natimbi was next, but it’s pretty plain and there was hardly anything my level, just a bunch of grey, green, and light-blue monsters. Boring.

After that was Qinimi, which was sort of a fairly small hub zone connecting to a few others. Again, not much here of real interest to me, just a bunch of light-blue monsters.

And then after that I stuck my nose into Barindu, which had a much more consistent mix of blues and light blues. There was an annoyingly long corridor at the entrance, but it eventually opened up on the garden area below, and I think I’ll try fighting a bit here the next time I’m on.

I only spent a little time in EQ tonight, but it was still enough to earn 4 more AAs, despite dying once when an unlucky break had three monsters beating on me. I’ve bought up three levels of the INT-cap-raising skill, getting me nearly 300 more mana, and should probably start looking at other skills to focus on as well.

But first, I should explore a bit. It’ll get boring rather quickly if I just sit in Plane of Storms and solo the same frogs over and over again, and I might be better off somewhere else anyway. Looking through the guides to each expansion tells me how to get to all of the new zones, and I’ll try and see as many of them as possible. I don’t know how much I’ll actually be able to do in a lot of those older zones, though. A lot of them have progression steps, and there might not be enough people around those old zones to make going through the progression practical. Especially when most of the loot is obsoleted by the newest couple of expansions anyway.

But I should at least drop in and say hi…

Tonight’s session in EQ was the one in which I actually started killing things. But first, I had to stop off and pick up one of the new mercenaries, which essentially gave me an AI-controlled duoing partner. You can select either a tank or a healer, and there are five tiers of each type, each higher one costing more than the others (there’s a one-time hiring fee and an ongoing every-15-minute continuation fee), though it’s not really exactly clear what the differences are. I picked a tier III dwarven healer and headed out to the Planes.

The most effective way to solo as an enchanter is through charm soloing, which is simply charming an enemy and sending it against other enemies to do your killing for you. Of course it’s not quite as easy as that — the charm can be resisted, it’s of random duration and could break at a bad time and leave you dealing with two enemies after you, some enemies will summon you directly to them and beat you up anyway, dealing with caster types can be a pain, it can drain a lot of mana very quickly, etc…

I was never really all that great at charm soloing before, but tonight it almost felt too easy, even though I’m severely out of practice. The healer merc gave me the HP buffs I normally wouldn’t have, it kept me and the charmed critter topped up so that I didn’t have to worry about HPs being worn down, and she kept me alive during the charm breaks that took a while to bring under control again. The healer even kept me alive through a really bad fight where a summoning giant somehow drained all my mana away and I was frantically looking for that restore-to-full veteran ability while charm broke at the same time, and even if I had died, the merc would have given me a rez.

I even made 5 AA points in only 4 hours, just practicing on light blues and a handful of dark blues in the Nightmare, Disease, and Storms planes. That’s crazy-fast compared to the rate I remember getting them before. I’ll mainly be spending them on the AA skills that raise the stat caps for now, since I’m severely capped on INT and that’ll get me more mana fairly easily. Beyond that, I’ll have to do a bit of research on just what the useful new AA skills are.

Today I finally got back into EverQuest in earnest. I started out by actually creating a whole new character, a gnome magician, and taking him through the new tutorial. Nothing really new was revealed that way, but it did get me used to the controls again. After switching back to my enchanter, I then spent a while fine-tuning the controls and UI, setting up windows, setting hot keys, creating spell lists, etc. The setup I’d used before is long gone, and I doubt it would have done me any good anyway.

I also grabbed a few map packs from map collection sites and installed them. They’re not nearly as pretty as WoW’s, but they’re still pretty much essential.

Somebody asked in /ooc how to get to some zone I hadn’t heard of, and my curiosity was piqued, so I followed their directions and headed there myself (via a stone-activated portal in the guild hall), and wound up in a rather spooky-looking part of the Depths of Darkhollows areas. It was all dark and underground like the fungal caverns of Luclin, but populated by mind-flayer-like creatures and weird, twisty paths. I might have to come back later for leveling, since the enemies were blue to me.

Back in PoK, I ran across an old guildie friend and we chatted for a bit, and then it was off to the bazaar to see what was available. I was afraid of what inflation might have done to the market, but managed to pick up five pieces of defiant silk armour that boosted my stats considerably, for not too much money. My HP went from 4352 to 5030, my mana from 5756 to 6263, and a bunch of other stat and regen increases as well. I’ll have to keep checking back for other good pieces, especially as I (hopefully) sell off some of my own stuff. Update: And I wound up selling my LoN booster deck for 55k plat, which should get me off to a pretty good start.

Next up, I’m going to have to get one of those fancy new mercs and get practicing on my charm soloing…