Sands And Serpents : EverQuest II’s Latest Expansion Prelude Begins

Kicking off the prelude to an expansion without telling anyone what it's called or where it's set might be considered idiosyncratic at the very least. It would also, you'd imagine, be quite tricky, unless the plan was to have the prelude tell you nothing about the expansion at all, in which case things would shift from idiosyncratic to downright peculiar.

That, nevertheless, is what Darkpaw have chosen to do for the warm-up for this year's nineteenth expansion for EverQuest II. Oh, not the last bit, thank Tunare. They haven't just dumped a bunch of unrelated busywork in our laps and told us to get on with it and not ask questions. That's very much not how things are done in Norrath these days (Not that I'm saying they ever were...)

The prelude to the as-yet unnamed expansion does itself have a name: Secrets of the Sands. It takes place mostly in the Desert of Ro, specifically Sinking Sands and Rujarkian Cliffs, apart from the set-up and introduction, for which you need to go to the gates of whichever suburb used to home the Aerakyn race and a wholly unpredictable trip to the Barren Sky, something that really sent me for a loop until I relented and checked the walkthrough.

I reckon myself moderately well-educated in the ethnological history of Norrath but I confess I know almost nothing about the Aerakyn. Before looking into their background for this post I could have told you they had wings and that would pretty much have been it. 

This looks like the place!

The reason I've never paid any attention to the race is that it's one of the three purchaseable options that don't come free as standard. The other two are the vampiric Freeblood and the feline Vah Shir. 

I don't have any issues with races that have to be bought through the cash shop. As I mentioned the other day, I have more Daybreak Cash than I know what to do with just from my monthly All Access stipend. I used some of it to unlock the Vah Shir when they became available because I played a Vah Shir in the original EverQuest and had a pre-existing emotional involvement with the race. 

I've thought a few times about paying to unlock the Freeblood but I don't much like the way they look. Also, I would have to buy a character slot as well if I actually wanted to play one and I definitely don't care that much about being a vampire. As for the Aerakyn, I can't say I've thought about them even once since the day they were added to the game.

I think this might be a new model. I can't recall seeing it before. Not sure I want to see it again, either.

Reading their wiki page I'm reminded that I did once know that the Aerakyn, like the Drakkin in EverQuest and the soon-to-be Dracthyr in World of Warcraft, are of draconic heritage. I don't know what it is about dragon-people in mmorpgs but somehow they always look desperately unnapealing. 

None of the defining features of dragons - armor-plated scales, long, thrashing tails, vast, gaping jaws, gigantic size - translate well - or even at all - to a humanoid form. It's notable that in most fantasy tales involving dragons that I've ever read, if the dragon can take on human form it's either indistinguishable from an ordinary person or looks like some kind of golden, glowing godling.

In mmorpgs, draconic races just look like elves with bad skin. About the only supposedly dragonlike traits that carry over are wings and scales. On a humanoid frame that tends to look like some kind of diseased bat.

I remember that place! All sand and elves Do we have to go there?

So, the Aerakyn are either the spawn - or more likely the creation - of dragons. The wiki is unclear on the exact details. Actually, it doesn't mention them at all, saying only "Once the unwilling soldiers of the great Prismatic Dragon, Kerafyrm, the Aerakyn are now free from his thrall. Unable to return to their homelands. they seek to re-establish their culture on Norrath."

And that's the key to the new series of quests that arrived last week. It seems the Aerakyn can give up trying to fit in and start packing instead. They're going home. 

Things begin with a call to meet Faezoth, a representative of the race, outside the locked gates of Starcrest Commune in Qeynos (Or his counterpart, Silrena, in the equivalent spot in Freeport.) Faezoth explains that an opportunity may have arisen for the exiled Aerakyn to return to the nest, although he seems unclear on where that might actually be. 

It could be in the Desert of Ro or maybe Takish`Hiz, the legendary elven city long since lost to the sands but surprisingly the front-runner turns out to be the Serpent Spine Mountains, home of the aforementioned Drakkin and site of the 2006 expansion that sought to reboot the original game for a new audience. Not seen since the Cataclysm (Or maybe the Shattering. I always get those mixed up.), it looks odds-on that the Serpent's Spine will be the next rediscovery from Old Norrath and the location for the upcoming expansion. It would therefore follow that the Drakkin and the Aerakyn are connected in some manner.

It's always uncomfortable when your character knows more than you do.

I'm sure there was more in the dialog but even though I was paying attention at the time I can't recall the details. I took screenshots of a few of the interchanges between Faezoth and my bruiser but the two of them spent a lot of time talking. I'm bound to have missed a few plot points.

Like most quests in EQII, the writing is solid and detailed, clearly written both by and for people with a deep interest in the lore. I have a more-than-shallow interest myself but there is one holy hell of a lot of it and I can't begin to keep any but the major players straight without a scorecard.

In terms of mechanics, the new questline stays absolutely true to form. There's an introduction that's all talk, followed by a trip to talk some more with someone else in a different zone. After that you get to go to yet a third zone, where you have to find and kill some mobs for drops, which you bring back to the last person you spoke to, so they can do a magic thing. 

The magic points the way to the inevitable new instance which is, equally inevitably, a series of underground tunnels and caverns, this time in a hitherto-undiscovered part of the orc-infested Cliffs of Rujark called The Fractured Cache. Once inside, you have to clear out everything that gets in your way, including a couple of slightly tougher Named mobs, the death of which causes deeper parts of the complex to reveal themselves.

Enter the maguffin.

Finally you reach your destination, in this case a lost treasure, described somewhat unhelpfully as an "ancient crystal arca". It looks like a chest and it's heavily warded so you're forced to leave it where it stands and return to make your report. 

Here, the usual script varies slightly. Since this is a pre-expansion event that has to run for a few weeks, if not months, Faezoth sends you back for another crack at the arca, thereby setting up a repeatable quest that can, according to the wiki, "be completed once per day" even though the instance itself  "has a three (3) day lockout". I'm not sure how that works but I think it's safe to say it's a daily.

Only 63,000 faction points to go!

The incentive to keep going back is faction with the Nomads of Ro, one of whom stands right next to Faezoth, hawking a wide range of new housing and appearance items. The conceit is that, as you keep trying to breach the wards around the arca, you clear out the invading orcs and return artefacts to the nomads, thereby raising your standing with them and encouraging them to sell you things they'd otherwise be loath to part with.

Each run nets you 3,500 faction. There are also three repeatable crating quest that reward a thousand faction per. You start at -10,000 and the top item on the list, Aerakyn wings that act as a flying mount, require 60,000. You do the math. I can't be bothered. 

Over the time the event is going to run (Until the as-yet unnanounced launch date of the as-yet unnamed expansion) it's clearly very achievable even for a casual player. All the areas are (Relatively) safe to reach even for a low-level character, everything scales to your character's level and the event is open to all, free-to-play included. 

Once you have the faction, everything is extremely cheap, priced from a few gold to just five platinum pieces for the wings. At this stage of the game's life, these aren't so much pocket-money prices as pocket lint.

Overall, it's a very nice pre-expansion package, better in my opinion than the last one or two have been. I was always interested to find out what the new expansion was going to be about, of course, but this has really whetted my appetite. 

I hope I'm right in thinking we're going back to the Serpent's Spine. It was one of the last expansions I played extensively on release with other people, primarily Mrs Bhagpuss but also a few others we met along the way, and I have fond memories of certain parts of it. I've also been back a few times since on my own. I know it fairly well.

If things progress at the usual pace, I'd expect to see full details, including pre-order information, in a very few weeks. I'll be signing up at the first opportunity.