Boost Me Up

By way of a public service announcement here's a paragraph from today's update notes for EverQuest II :

Destiny of Velious – New Heroic Character

Start your adventures in Destiny of Velious with a free limited 85 heroic character! With the launch of Destiny of Velious, each account will earn a single Level 85 character boost upon logging into the Kaladim server.

This boost is granted once per account and grants gear appropriate for starting adventuring in Destiny of Velious overland content, and may be placed in the shared bank.

Yep! Another one. 

As you might guess from the headline, this particular boost is in honor of the opening of the Destiny of Velious expansion on the Time Limited Expansion server Kaladim. It's kind of a big deal for several reasons, not least that a lot of people have been waiting none too patiently for it to get here.

DoV is one of the larger and more favored expansions. It added the hub city of Thurgadin, consolidated Public Quests as a central feature and it was also the expansion that introduced flying mounts, something that, as we all know, can often be a literal game-changer. I believe the raiding was well-received, too, although that's a long way out of my remit.

For once, the basic Level 85 boost is entirely appropriate. DoV shifts the cap to 90 so 85 is the starting line for what will be end-game content for a good while to come. If anyone had been thinking about playing on Kaladim, this would definitely be the time to do it.

You would, of course, need a subscription. Sorry! A membership. EQII's free to play offer, while still generous, is no longer anything like as inclusive as it was back when Smed was trying to convince everyone F2P Your Way was the future.

I do have All Access membership. And it's the account where I made my character on Kaladim back when the server started. I would not be averse to starting a new level 85 there and running around with the leveling crowd for a week or two.

Shame I don't have a free character slot.

I did consider buying (yet) another one. It's not like I don't have the Daybreak Cash. Thing is, I just did that a few months ago when I made my Vah Shir and I haven't even finished levelling her yet. It seems a bit of a stretch to imagine if I made a fresh 85 on Kaladim that I'd actually play them.

There is another option. It's not a free level 85 character Darkpaw's giving away. It's a free level 85 boost. And as I said I have a character on Kaladim already. I could bump her up to 85. 

I considered that too. The thing is, I really like her. I haven't played her much recently but I did get her all the way to level twenty back when Kaladim launched and that certainly wasn't nothing. She's wearing all her starting armor in her appearance slots and she looks great in it. And I named her Lana. That pretty much sealed it. We bonded, she and I.

Any excuse, eh?

From experience, jumping an existing character sixty levels makes for a disconnect. I've done it a couple of times and it tends to derail the process. It would probably be okay if I went straight from boosting to levelling up to that 90 cap. That would give some context and continuity. 

I'm not going to do that, though. Partly because I have too much else going on at the moment and partly because I've done those levels in Velious a few times too often. I enjoyed it the first two or three times but I'm not keen to see it all again just now.

So that'll be yet another character level boost in the bank. At least it's a bit different from the rest in that I can only use it on one server. Is that an improvement?

The level boost is a freebie but naturally Darkpaw would also like to sell you something. Normally I don't even bother to mention the packs that they put together for occasions like this but I have to say the Destiny of Velious Crate is pretty darn good for the price.

It costs $34.99, which is a lot, but there's a lot inside. There's a flying mount, appropriately, although perhaps less-appropriately it's a dinosaur. Now that's new. Then there's a Velium Multi-forge you can place in your house that acts as any craft station. Incredibly useful. 

There's a 66 slot bag, always very welcome, but this one "includes a friendly (antagonistic) goblin that will jump out and make faces at people behind you. " Seriously, who doesn't want one of those? And there's an NPC who'll port you "right outside all of the critical Velious dungeons". I might want to see a list of which ones count as "critical" but that sounds spiffy, doesn't it?

There's a load more in the crate and it's all good, useful stuff. I'm not going to go through the whole lot. Just go check the link if you want to know. If I go on much longer about it here someone's going to start wondering if I'm being paid to plug the thing. Which, sadly, I'm not. I just know a bargain when I see one.

All the stuff can be used on any server and frankly if this was at a different point in the expansion cycle I'd be seriously thinking about buying one. It's that good. Yet again, though, it's not a good time to invest in EQII because I have too much else going on and it wouldn't get the use it deserves.

Wilhelm had a post up recently about some unusually timely and relevant advertising Daybreak had been doing. I do think this pack looks better targeted and better priced than some we've seen before. I wonder if EG7's influence is beginning to make itself felt?

There's stuff going on in EQII that doesn't require either membership, real money or much of a time commitment, too. I ought to mention that while I'm here.

The Oceansfull festival is back with some nice, new rewards and a new three-part Overseer mission. That will get you a house pet, a permanent illusion and a title. I'm going to run it on several characters. It doesn't take long. Oceansfull runs 'til the 18th and then Scorched Sky begins a week later on the 25th.

I think that's about it for now. Oh, except to honk my own horn a little. I put in a bug report back at the beginning of April and today's patch notes confirmed it had been fixed. Always nice to know someone's listening.

I'll leave you with this mysterious message, also from today's patch notes:

Names

• All servers, except Thurgadin, will now enforce English character names.

Really? We all have to call ourselves things like Nigel or Hilary? 

Bags me Arbuthnot!