Brass In Pocket: EQ2

I love in-game holidays and special events. Really, I can't get enough of them. Even so, they do come with a few... issues, shall we say.

It doesn't really scream "Iksar"

Issues like, for example, who should get to wear the new outfit? The Water Wielder and Earth Wielder sets you can get with the currency from EQ2's pre-expansion warm-up both look fantastic but the former is really suited to a finger-waggler of some sort while the latter would probably best fit a Druid.

I don't have a Druid so that sorts that, but I do have cloth casters of several stripes: a Wizard, a Warlock and a Necromancer. The Warlock and the Wizard looked at themselves in the wardrobe mirror, wearing the new appearance gear, and promptly decided they preferred what they already had.

The Necromancer, who is still in the boosted Level 100 gear from a year or two ago, was very happy to get a makeover but was disappointed to find that, as an Iksar, the new robe automagically turned itself into yet another bell-bottomed pants suit.

As a result, no-one's wearing it. All the pieces appear to be fully tradeable, not even Heirloom, so I may pass it on to another account. I have a very badly-dressed Magician who might be glad of it.

16 of 41 currencies... so far

Another perennial problem is forgetting to spend the currency at all. These days, I'm very pleased to say, the coins and tokens almost always end up in a magic wallet so you no longer have to find somewhere to store them, which is just as well since I try to do all the one-off events and most of the repeatable ones and they all have their own currencies.

They are mostly flagged "Heirloom", which you would think would mean they would appear in all your character's wallets but as far as I can tell they don't. They stay with whoever picked them up and if there's a way to move them I can't find it.

In most cases it doesn't matter all that much because the items you buy with them are also likely to be Heirlooms. My Berserker had the new Elemental Storm Shreds so he bought a set of Water Wielder armor and put it in the shared bank for the casters to try on. Not that they thanked him.

For himself he bought the Rust Colored Kitten he wanted. As a ratonga, he has a bit of a thing about cats. He went straight to his Maj'Dul mansion, where another issue arose. He has a lot of stuff. Too much for one house, even a large one like his main home. It takes about twenty seconds to load his front hall - on a good day.

He has other residences, naturally. No-one in Norrath has just the one house. The problem there is remembering where they are. Also decorating them all. And, dash it, the Maj'Dul house is home. He has a cosy inn room and he already spends far too much time at his Mara Estate, where he put the shared materials storage and the plant that gives the daily rare. He doesn't need to start decorating yet another place.

Stand well back - furniture loading in...

He may yet have to, all the same. His main home is now so full I have to think twice then think again before putting anything new down. It's already teeming with wandering creatures, like a badly-maintained country zoo, so I don't think one smallish kitten will make much difference.

As well as the kitten he also had the Raging Elemental plushie from the collect, which he finally finished. The last shiny was rare enough that another fifty or so Shreds had popped into his wallet before it dropped. That particular collect is going for over 4000 Platinum on the broker right now.

He has a "trick". It's washing himself. He's only little...

Plushies don't roam like house pets so he was able to place the thing in the "weird" room, where all the slightly disturbing stuff goes. Well, some of it. There's a lot out on the terrace and down in the courtyard, too. EQ2 has plenty of weird.

All of that took me an hour or so and got rid of two-thirds of my Shreds. I didn't buy any of the other house items I wanted because I thought I probably ought to have some idea where I was going to put them first.

If we get close to the end of the event and I still haven't decided, though, I guess it would be better to grab them and stash them in a moving crate for the time being. Better that than ending up with yet another unspent currency in my wallet with no NPC left in the game to take it.

As I said: issues. Still, rather have them than not, eh?