Our regular Thursday group in EQ2 finally finished off the Timorous Deep quest lines, and apparently we’re being sent off to Butcherblock next. That got my mystic up to level 22, and I should be able to get farther in the prep stages of some of the heritage quests now.

But I think we’re going to investigate some dungeons first, and although we haven’t decided what to do with the weekly group yet, on Friday a few of us got together and did Wailing Caves with our alts. The dungeons are definitely a lot harder than the typical solo/duo quest lines we’ve been doing, since a lot of the monsters are rated ^^ or ^^^ and are linked into encounters that can’t be split. Since we didn’t have an enchanter, we just had to tank the extras on each pull, and some of the fights were pretty chaotic.

I’ve continued to be busy in EQ2, of course, even though I keep forgetting to update here. Last weekend I started a dark elf SK alt and got him up to level 16 and 20 armoursmithing. Melee in EQ2 is definitely more involved than in EQ1, mainly because of the huge number of attack cooldowns you wind up having, and from trying to use Heroic Opportunities effectively. I still don’t really have a good pattern down for the SK like I do for the mystic.

Speaking of the mystic, I got his alchemy up to level 30, and that’s about as far as I can get without gaining more class levels. He’s still stuck at level 19, but I took the opportunity to wander around to the Commonlands and Greater Faydark and do as many newbie quests as I could. There weren’t many I could do in the Commonlands since I can’t enter Freeport, but I’m still working through them in GFay. I’m up to 33 AA points now just from all of these extra quests and exploration.

My money problems are also temporarily solved after finding a quest chain on the island of Mara that only required gathering materials, for a reward of over 17 gold each time. You have to go to higher and higher level areas each time though, so I’m stuck on the fourth stage of it for now, but I earned enough to buy myself some 22-slot backpacks for the shared bank, at least.

I’ve been busy in EQ2 lately, unsurprisingly, starting out with getting a bit further with tradeskilling on my illusionist. Just like my old enchanter, he’s a jewelcrafting expert, and got up to tradeskill level 22.

At this point I need components from higher-level areas, and ironically enough, my enchanter could survive in those areas but didn’t have a high enough gathering skill to actually pick anything up. Since gathering is somewhat tedious, I worked on raising those skills with my primary mystic instead…but he was too low level to survive in those areas just yet.

Ah well, the weekly Thursday group came and we worked through a lot of the quests in the Mok Rent area, finishing off all of the ones involving the southern areas and now we have the bird-guy quests still left to do. That got me to level 18, and then I accidentally hit 19 today when I forgot to switch back to 100% AA exp.

I did some more quests around the Antonica area with my mystic today, gaining a handful of AA points, and with those and the ones earned on Thursday, I’ve been able to start adding pet abilities. Now he can interrupt casters, and hastes the rest of the group by 8%. Soon he’ll be able to randomly proc wards on the group, as well.

And I also went back to Thundering Steppes and managed to successfully gather a bunch of tradeskill components now that I was higher level. It was only enough to bump me up to level 26 alchemy though, as the recipes use more and more ingredients and it takes more combines per level. I also learned transmuting along the way, though I haven’t really done anything with it yet.

Yesterday was also spent primarily in EQ2, as I continued cleaning up newbie quests around the Qeynos and Antonica areas with my shaman. And then went and did them again with my illusionist, who’s now up to level 19.

I think that’s as far as I’ll take my shaman around that area though, as he’s starting to run into content that we could do as a group instead.

The last few days have been pretty EQ2-heavy, starting with our weekly group outing on Thursday. Everybody met up and split into two groups since we had too many for a single group, and we worked our way through the Timorous Deep newbie quests and up through the Green Overlook, which is as far as I got with my enchanter as well.

On Friday I primarily worked on the newbie quests around the Qeynos area, with the xp slider set 100% towards AAs so that I didn’t gain any adventure xp and get too far ahead in levels. And then on Saturday I primarily worked on crafting, getting up to level 24 as an Alchemist. The potions I can make don’t look too exciting, but I’ll also be able to make enchantments that you can apply to pieces of armour to add stats and abilities. After that, I then did some exploration and questing in the Antonica area just outside Qeynos, which would have been the old West Karana and North Karana, I guess.

So, currently I’m at adventure level 15, crafting level 24, and with 16 AA points earned. And I haven’t even spent 15 of the AAs; I still need to research builds, so I’ve only spent one on the summon wolf ability, which was a prerequisite to pretty much everything in one tree anyway.

Last night was mostly spent in EQ2, preparing for the group by gathering some resources and making a big pile of backpacks. They’re only 6-slot, but it’s better than the nothing you start with and much cheaper than buying them.

I also met up with the guy organizing the group, got invited to the guild, and got elevated so that I can invite the others as I see them. Unfortunately the guild bank is almost full, so I can’t dump the extra collection items I have in it yet. Maybe I’ll have to relieve the bank of some of its burden…

I’ve only moderately twinked my shaman so far, with some leftover junk from my enchanter. Behold, the Oven Mitts of Woe!