Where Does This Door Go? : EQ2

Sometimes you end up doing things you weren't planning on doing. Sometimes you end up doing things when you don't have time to be doing them at all. Sometimes that works out just fine.

A couple of nights ago I found myself standing at the gates of a Thalumbran Advanced Solo instance I had no intention of entering, most especially not a few minutes before midnight. So I went in.

Just to have a look, you understand. Con the mobs. Maybe kill a couple. Test the waters, so to speak.

And then there was a Named and I thought, why not? Give it a try, see how it goes. And it went pretty well, at least after I swapped into tank mode, and next thing I have the wiki up checking what happens next and before you know it it's half past midnight and I'm looking at the final boss.

Well, at least I had the sense to stop there. Camped out at the front (I say "the front". It was a one-room dungeon, near as makes no difference) came back the next morning and finished it off before work.

That was Stygian Threshold: The Howling Gateway. The howling part was a bunch of Kobolds and the gateway looked like the way to the forge of Brell Serilis, The Duke of Below, creator of all the interesting races - dwarves, gnomes, ratonga, goblins, gnolls. And kobolds, don't forget kobolds. Everyone always forgets kobolds.

There's Brell up there, waving his hammer about. You can see him through the wibbly-wobbly window. Gave me a frisson it did, coming across him unexpectedly. Assuming that's who it is. Looks like him, anyway.

Last night, believe it or not, I did it again. Nearly midnight and somehow I ended up outside the entrance to Kralet Penumbra. There was a choice of three portals and I remembered one from the YouTube video I linked before.

I also remembered Borgio saying his dwarven Berserker had 2.5 million hit points. Well, I've been working on that. Mine has 1.9m and rising now. So naturally I began to wonder if I could pull the whole room and AE it down the way he did. Only one way to find out.

Turns out I could! Of course I had my trusty pirate pal, Raffik, to help but still. And this time I didn't have to get up for work the next day so I was able to finish it all off in one go.

It's a testament to the lateness of the hour and the intensity of the combat that I didn't take any screenshots in either instance other than the one of Brell above. Or possibly there wasn't much to look at. These instances are small. Functional but fun.

Today I carried on the "I didn't plan on doing this" theme by running the full Ratonga racial questline in the revamped Temple Street. On Stormhold, the Time limited Expansion server.

Let's forget I have never yet done any of the Qeynos village stories, nor half the Freeport ones. Let's forget I have done the ratonga one at least three times already. Let's forget that it's a terrible use of the current bonus xp event because it involves mostly not doing anything that gives xp. And let's especially forget that it's one of the least "retro" things available on the TLE servers, being not only  anachronistic to the Pillars of Flame era currently running but also identical to the version available on Live.

Then I followed that up by doing something even more pointless, albeit so retro it hurt, namely the access quest for Fallen Gate, a dungeon that ceased to require an access quest about a decade ago. Who cares if it was pointless though? It was fun and I got to go out on the roof of the final instance and look at the view. That was the best bit.

Is that building available anywhere as housing? Because I want a Freeport house with a flat roof you can stand on and look out over the waterfront. If it's not a Prestige House it darn well ought to be.

Then, finally, I picked up my daily present from Santa Glug and got the best one yet: a santa beard and hat combo that looks even less convincing on a ratonga than it does on a goblin. Result!

So, that was my weekend, or some of it, anyway. Unplanned, random, unexpected and often without any purpose whatsoever. The best kind there is.