My Idea Of Fun: EQII

Look up. Up there, right above us. See that? That's my shared bank, that is. Why don't we take a closer look?

The first box is all potions. Partially sorted. A work in progress. I only got them all into the one box just a few minutes ago.

All of those came from Overseer missions. They're useful and I'm glad to have them only I'm terrible at using consumables. They make a very significant difference to both speed and success when soloing the harder instances but I only remember that when I'm struggling. If I'm up and killing I never think to use potions to go faster. So they pile up. Also, when do I do hard instances? More on that later, kind of.

The second box is Infusers, mostly, plus some Powerlinks, a peculiar kind of one-time buff that I've never used and don't entirely understand. "Things I don't understand in EverQuest II" could be my specialist subject on Mastermind. Also a few overspill Mount items that wouldn't fit in the third box and some old Adornments I probably could junk.

Infusers are both useful and annoying. They're used in the Infusion system (No! Really?) which is how you incrementally improve gear. There are different grades and types. The current expansion uses Empyral Infusers and that's what I'm getting from the Overseer missions but I still have Celestial and Planar Infusions from previous iterations. They all still work.

Hello. It's me again!

The problem is, I can't see the point of using any of them to upgrade gear until I'm reasonably sure I'm going to be wearing or wielding it for a while and I'm nowhere near that point yet. I don't feel like much of anything any of my characters is wearing is likely to be around for long.

I haven't even done the final instance of the Adventure Signature line on anyone yet, let alone completing any of the Achievements that give what's probably going to be the best solo gear I'm going to see. But I have now at least looked at those achievements, thanks to Topauz's suggestion, and many of them seem, erm, achievable. So I'm sitting on my Infusers for now.

Bags three and four are stuffed with saddles, reins, barding and the like. Things mounts wear. A hackamore. Don't ask me what that is. I got most of those in the Dragon Attack pre-expansion event. I have a lot more stashed on individual characters, too.

One of the boxes is mostly tradeables. The other is mostly Heirloom. A few of the tradeable items are worth a lot. Millions, if the ones on the broker are priced to sell. I'm dithering over whether to sell mine or use them. I've been dithering for weeks.

The rest are either not particularly what I need right now or can't be equipped until various mounts level up. Leveling up mounts takes months and you can only level one at a time per character. You can buy your way out of that and you can get mount time potions as drops to speed things up. I have had a couple from Overseer missions.

I don't understand how this works. It's not how you'd think.

Even so, it's going to take a lot of thought and organization to work out which mount gets what on which character. I have half a dozen max level adventurers, four max level crafters and all of them have multiple mounts. I haven't been taking this seriously until now, so some of the mounts I've leveled up are the wrong ones and I only just realized I really need to use separate mounts for crafting and adventuring . Only all my crafters are also adventurers, so they'll need one of each.

I could stash all the mount stuff  in a character's bank to free up two boxes in the shared bank. I have access to an almost unbelievable amount of storage in EQII. Quite literally many, many thousands of slots. Which is fine, only I know that if I stash things on characters I'll never see them again. Out of sight, out of mind.

On occasion I have resorted to making notes on who is keeping what in their bank vault. I had it all written in a notebook at one time but of course it's out of date now. I know there are people who would make a spreadsheet for this but the day I find myself tempted to do something like that is the day I start looking for another hobby.

Box five is full of craft books for levels 111-120. Also some spell upgrade materials and recipes and mats for making yet more mount gear. I need to run all the crafters past this lot so they can scribe whatever books they can. Then I need to decide if I'm going to level up any of the other crafts so I know whether to keep those books.

I don't understand how this works, either. Add it to the list.

I ought then to sell what's left over but due to certain anomalies of crafting in Blood of Luclin, some are valuable and some are worthless. Which means checking them all. Which takes time.

Boxes five and six are full of gear. A lot of this is from Overseer missions. The rest I either picked up as various characters went through the Signature lines or I got as drops from overland Nameds. Most of it probably isn't an upgrade for anyone but some of it will be.

To know for sure I have to have everyone look at everything they could use so I can evaluate the auto-comparison. Sometimes that can be a tad hard to parse so it takes quite a while to do even one character. I have six.

Once I've equipped all the upgrades on everyone I'll have to decide what to do with the rest. I could try and sell some of the better pieces but I never really bother to sell gear. I tend to assume everyone else also has more than they know what to do with.

The weapons all need to be converted into Planar Weapon Essences (you can see some of those in Box Eight). That's what fuels weapons upgrades in addition to Infusing. Of course, the same issue applies, namely I have yet to be sure I'm keeping the weapons I'm using. So those just get stashed for now.

The rest of the gear, I have to decide whether to Transmute or Salvage. I've been exceptionally lucky with my Overseer missions so far. I have several BoL Adornment recipes that use the mats I'd get from transmuting gear over level 111. I even have a recipe to make a Red or Blue Rune (Growth, in fact), which is a big deal right now, let me tell you.

The problem here is that I don't fully understand how the revised system works yet. Some of the recipes have "Charges" and I don't know what that implies. I need to do some research before I make anything.

It's Mythical so I suppose it's a good drop.

The last box has a few odds and ends from earlier eras of the game at the top. I haven't gotten around to sorting those out yet. They probably need to be stashed in someone's bank, after which they will almost certainly never be seen again.

In the middle are the three grades of Fragments that everyone complains bitterly about getting as
rewards. I think they have something to do with Epic Weapons but since I've never even looked at how Epic Weapon quests work in EQII I have no clue what to do with them. I just hold on to them in case I need them one day. I got all of mine from Overseer missions, naturally.

Then there are a couple of boxes. I had my Carpenter make a bunch of Swamp Ash Boxes (44 slots) for my Wizard so she could clear her bags and stuff all the unsorted stuff in her bank vault, which is the EQII equivalent of sweeping the dirt under the carpet.

While I was doing that I noticed she could make a 96 slot Jewellery Box. It says it holds "Jewelery, Baubles, Adornments,Transmuted Components and Cloaks" which sounded extremely handy. Only when I put it in the bank I found out it doesn't open like a normal box. It has a "Use" button but pressing it does nothing. So that's some more reading I have to do.

Finally we come to Agents. I get these now and again as loot from Overseer missions. They duplicate. If I get new ones I add them immediately to the Berserker or the Necromancer, my two primary Overseer operators. The spares I have to shunt around to other characters but I haven't yet found time to think about who is going to get whom.

That, in a rather sizeable nutshell, is a glimpse into my EQII gameplay right now. I'm playing the game for several hours every day and enjoying it as much as, maybe more, than I have for years. It's incredibly complex and it makes me think almost all the time, which I love. Only I'm not really doing anything, am I?

Or, rather, I'm doing an awful lot but almost all of it is preparation. But for what?

As well as all that sorting and upgrading and sending Agents out on Missions, I'm making sure to use my staff every two hours to go searching for Shadowed crafting materials, which I then use to make spell and CA upgrades for myself or to sell. And doing the public crafting quests every time the cooldown allows.

Not the best selection of spells
but the first one I made sold for 150k so I'm not complaining

On the subject of making money, the Shadowed book I got hasn't exactly made me rich but I have made more than two million plat so far, which is a lot of money by my count. I've also either been astoundingly fortunate in having three more Expert/Mastercrafted books drop (a Sage book for Level 115 Caster spells, a Jeweler book for Level 115 Scout CAs and a Level 120 Armorer book) or the rarity of these things, as frequently bemoaned on the forums, is wildly overstated.

I'm involved in a fun (for me, at least) price war with a couple of other crafters, which means I have to check my prices two or three times a day. When things sell I have to replace them and since I'm selling on a different character (because he has the 100% broker fee reduction Veteran sales display) I have to swap them over and it all takes time! So. Much. Time.

I'm still doing the Familiars Wild quest daily on three characters. That involves capturing creatures almost all of which are well below my level so I need either to mentor or to be extremely careful, since they have to be both aggroed and alive when I capture them and they all die instantly if any of my max levels even look at them with an arched eyebrow.

And why am I doing that quest? Well, mainly because I enjoy it but the nominal reason is to upgrade the familiars I'm actually using. Everything leads to upgrading the characters. "Upgrading" means making them more powerful and/or robust. Why am I doing that? So I can kill things faster or more efficiently and die less often while doing it, of course.

Only, when do I ever actually go and fight anything these days? Anything where the conclusion isn't foregone, that is? There I am, happily whiling away several hours every day, having a jolly old time trying to make all my characters fit for battle and yet I have no immediate plans to go fight anything!

In fact, I actively avoid it. The only character who's doing anything that could vaguely be called adventuring is my new Fury and she's only doing it to level up so she can stop like all the rest.

Oh well. I'm enjoying myself. And I guess I'll be ready when the time comes. If it ever does. Which doesn't seem all that likely right now...