Like Rabbits: EverQuest, EQII

I'm starting to feel like I'm running a news service for all things Norrath but I know from personal experience how very easy some of this stuff is to miss so I feel I probably need to mention it when it catches me out, too. I logged in this morning to collect my overnight Overseer rewards in EverQuest. I've been doing it for months, so I know what to expect, and that's certainly not almost 5% of a level from a single quest.

I checked as the others came in and they all seemed very high. I wondered if we'd had a patch overnight. There was a time when I'd read every set of patch notes from start to finish but that was years ago and even when I do read them nowadays, I often skim.

Checking the forums told me Everquest hadn't had an update since the seventeenth of June. Obviously that didn't come with an xp bonus. I'd have noticed. I mean, I noticed today, didn't I?

The first line of the patch notes gave me a start, though:

"Three new pride hares, along with the three introduced last year, will be freely claimable from the Marketplace from June 24th to July 31st"

I suppose that should have been obvious. Why would it only be EverQuest II that celebrates Pride? What really surprised me was that EverQuest even had familiars that everyone could use. I thought familiars in old Norrath were almost exclusively a wizard thing.

From a quick search it looks as if they still are. And a close reading of the note confirms it doesn't mention "familiars" at all. It just says "pride hares". Curiously uncapitalized, of which more in a moment.

The thing to do was obviously to claim them and see for myself. It turns out the hares, which are identical to the EQII six, are illusions.

Wait, let me rephrase that. The hares themselves are very much not illusions. They are six "physical" items that take up six valuable bag slots. If you click them, though, they cast an illusion that turns your pet into a bunny.

Well, it does if you have a pet. I was curious to see what would happen if you didn't, so I logged in my Cleric. He discovered that, if you don't have a pet, you get... a familiar.

So that's that sorted. The hares, familiars or illusions, are free on the Daybreak Marketplace (aka cash shop) until the end of July.

Going back to the capitalization issue I mentioned a few paragraphs back, I was curious to see that the mildly enigmatic but still evidently appropriate Pride-related descriptions we were discussing in the comments to my post on the EQII bunnies don't feature at all in the text of the EQ versions.

In EverQuest the bunnies have the same names (Errolisi's Aceheart Hare so on) but all the game tells you is that you have an "Adorable little pink, blue and white clothwork bunny" or whatever the appropriate colors happen to be.

I wrote a paragraph about how odd that seemed and then had to delete it when I loged in my Beastlord to pick up her six.  I spotted that full details, in considerably more straightforward language than EQII uses, are attached to each of the hares in their Marketplace descriptions, where it confirms that Aceheart represents asexuality, Openheart pansexuality and Freeheart non-binary.

It also explains very clearly that you either get a pet illusion or a familiar. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I'd just read the blurb when I bought the things, although I'm still not sure why they wouldn't also include the full description on the in-game "Lore" tab.

While we're on the topic of Familiars, I also ought to note that the Familiars Wild quest in EQII has been updated to give the new Season Seven familiars as rewards. These potentially have excellent stats, particularly if you're lucky enough to get one of the higher quality ones. I did the quest on my Wizard today and she got a Legendary familiar first time out.

Infuriatingly, most of my characters are still bugged on this quest, with the questgiver telling them they already have it when they don't. I've bugged this and petitioned it but with no success. I'll keep trying because the Berserker was also bugged and then one day he could magically get the quest again for no discernable reason. Best to keep at it if you have it, I'd say. It's quick and easy and the rewards are very valuable.

None of this, of course, does anything to explain why I was getting more than the usual amount of xp for my Overseer quests. Thre's a very simple explanation: it's Summer Spectacular!

No, me neither. I'm guessing this is EverQuest's equivalent of EQII's Summer Ethereals. Not being a regular EQ player, I must have missed it in previous years.

For the first week of July "All XP, faction, and rare spawns will be increased by 76%." That sounds like a strange amount but of course this weekend is the Fourth of July. As some wag on the forum suggested, perhaps we ought to get 1776% instead. If only!

EverQuest also has another summer event running, Hardcore Heritage. I was hoping to take my Magician on an outing for the first phase, which saw Blackburrow and Cazic Thule upgraded to suit "adventurers who are level 80 and above" as well as "The Ruins of Old Guk and the Estate of Unrest", for which you apparently needed to be "at least level 85". I thought that I might just about be able to handle some of that, solo, in the high nineties.

Sadly, I never managed to find time to give it a try. The caravanserai has since moved on to Crushbone, The Permafrost Caverns, The Castle of Mistmoore, and Nagafen's Lair, the first pair of which are for level ninety plus and the other two for level 100s. Technically that's me but I think I'll pass. As for the final phase, when the Ruins of Sebilis open for business to characters of level 105 and above, well maybe next year, when I'm 120.

No, I'll stick to doing my Overseer quests in the safety of the Guild Lobby, raking in my almost-doubled xp. A week of that could get me a couple of levels. And I'm hoping at least some of the Hardcore Heritage drops will be tradeable, which could make for some cheap upgrades on the broker.

It's going to be a long summer.