Two In A Tower

It took me a while but this morning I finally got around to trying out EverQuest's 25th Anniversary Tower. It does have a more impressive, less lore-breaking name inside the game itself but "Anniversary Tower" is what the press release called it back in January and that's the name I have stuck in my mind.

I went to take a look at it just about as soon as it appeared but there was an access quest I didn't want to get involved with just then and what with Palworld, Nightingale and everything else it's taken me this long to find the right moment to do something about it. Ever the way with EverQuest. Even when we're talking about something as low-key as an anniversary event, you don't just pile in. Bad things happen when you do that.

So, anyway, after my second death this morning...

Tell you what. Why don't we begin at the beginning? 

When I went to log in right after breakfast, the first thing I had to decide was which character was going to be my guinea-pig for the day. I'd done a little reading in advance and it seemed the rewards might be worth having for a casual solo player like myself. Sure, the raiders were all complaining there was nothing in it for them but there were some "Thank-you, Darkpaw" notes from F2P players too.

The event scales to level so I could have called on any of my three dozen or so characters but it seemed like it might be best to take what passes for my "main" character these days, my level 115 Magician. I logged her in but even before I got started I ran into the usual problem I encounter every time I go to play her - her buffs.

For about the past two years she's been standing in the Guild Lobby, right in the middle of The Pile. The Pile is the spot where everyone leaves their characters so they can soak up the Mass Group Buffs generous players often cast before they log out for the day. 

As a result, Magmia, my Mage, is raid-buffed to an alarming degree and I daren't take her out of the Guild Lobby,  Plane of Knowledge or The Bazaar, zones where time stands still and buffs never run out, unless I know I'm going to do some serious leveling. Since she can't gain any more XP until I buy the most recent expansion and unlock ten more levels, that means she's pretty much grounded.

I thought about it for a while, then I said "Sod it! Cassis is already there. She can do it!" And that, I guess, is how she comes to have 116 hours played.

Knowing the event scales to level, I wasn't expecting too much trouble. I'd read that behind each tower door lay nothing more than a single room with five mobs, each of which could be fought separately. Most of the comments I'd read were complaining about how unchallenging it was and speculating about how it must have been put together an intern on their first day.

I also knew the access quest was a scavenger hunt, another reason I picked Cassis for the job. If you're going to go zone-hopping around Norrath, a Druid is your first choice. Well, unless you have a Wizard, maybe, but I'd still go Druid for the speed.

As it turns out, the scavenger hunt for each floor takes place in a single zone so there wasn't all that much porting required. Still more than you'd think, though, albeit for reasons more related to my own lack of preparedness than anything to do with quest design.

Playing EverQuest is like riding a bike... so long as you were riding a bike last Tuesday. It does all come back to you, eventually. It's just that there's a lot of it to come back and it might take a while. In my case today it took about an hour and a half and a couple of deaths.

Fortunately, death isn't what it was in Norrath. The days of corpse runs are long gone and even significant  XP loss seems to be a thing of the past. I'm not saying there is none - just that I died twice in a session and still came out half a level ahead.

In EQ you always expect to die but both Cassis' deaths were very unexpected. And entirely my fault for making several newbie mistakes, the worst of which was starting off thinking it was going to be straightforward. It's never straightforward. Nothing in EverQuest is.

I logged Cassis in, ran down the sands to the tower and took the teleport inside I spoke to the Merchant to get the quest and realized she didn't give it. There was no-one else to ask so I figured it might trigger when you click the door. I went up the ramp to the first entrance, where I spotted a blue ball of light on the floor. I clicked on that only to find I couldn't pick it up because my bags were full.

Absolutely typical first day back. Also why I picked a Druid for the job. I found something in my bags I could live without, got rid of it to make space, picked up the ball of light and watched it turn into a "Broken Key of Sands". I had two bag slots with single items blocking them so stashed one in the only other space left and put the Broken Key in the bag slot where I wouldn't lose it. 

Since I knew I was about to do a scavenger hunt, I thought I'd better make some more space for whatever I was going to have to bring back. I memmed Ring of Knowledge, ported back, turned myself into a wolf for the run-speed, loped over to the Tinkering vendor, bought two ten-slot Toolboxes and then couldn't find them. No error message saying I didn't have space, nothing on my cursor... turned out the "Key" I'd picked up was actually a three-slot box and both the new Toolboxes had gone in there because in EQ you can put a container inside a container.

With that sorted out, I went to the bank and stashed a bunch of stuff I have no idea what to do with in my vault alongside all the rest of the stuff I have no idea what to do with and then I had plenty of space. I memmed Ring of Ro and ported back down to the desert. 

The quest told me to check the orc camps in the south-east so I ran up there. Porting had wiped my wolf illusion so I cast good old Spirit of Wolf instead, plus Levitate for good measure. I could see the orc camps on the map (EQMaps add-on. Essential.) although I knew from memory where they were anyway. I figured they'd be about level 9 so I'd be able to stroll into their camp, pick up whatever it was I needed for the scavenger hunt and be on my way without a fight.

Yeah. This is EQ. Have you played before?

I trotted into the first camp and an Orc Oracle started casting some dumb orc spell at me. One Starfire and he'd be cinders. Except he wasn't. He shrugged it off and landed Malosi on me, followed by some heavy DoT. I was half health before I realized I was in trouble. 

I dotted him back and he resisted. I tried to root him and he resisted. By this time I was back-pedalling and he was chasing me. I tried to snare him and got a message saying he was immune. I tried to heal myself but Druids don't get good heals for a long time, certainly not at 48. By the time I decided I'd better run away for real it was too late.

Back at my bind in the Guild Lobby I checked to see what damage had been done. Not much, actually. All my stuff - still with me. All my spells - still memmed. All my buffs - still on, not that there were many because I hadn't bothered to buff myself. 

Okay, I know what to expect now, I thought. Let's go again.

Round two went much the same. Well, it did after I pulled an Orc Shaman thinking it was the Oracle and killed it in seconds because that one really was about Level 9. There was no sign of my real target. I wondered if I'd bugged the quest somehow but no, I just needed to go into the camp again to respawn him.

I did better in the rematch but I'd forgotten that they'd fixed DoT stacking a few years back so spells of different levels in the same line no longer add. Higher versions block lower ones so there's no point having both Drones of Doom and Drifting Death memmed. I couldn't stack enough damage to put the Orc down but he had no such issues with me.

Back in the Guild Lobby, I remembered my Merc. I also remembered I had buffs. I got the merc out, buffed him, buffed myself, went back and did it properly. Third time's the charm. With the mercenary tanking and the right spells loaded, I was able to stack fire and magic DoTs, nuke and heal from a safe distance. When I overdid it, which was pretty quickly because I'm out of practice at playing a Druid, I got the Orc rooted and we carried on from there.

The Orc went down and I got his part of the key. Drops, not ground spawns for the scavenger quest, then. Never thought of that.

The quest updated and told me to go look in the Sand Giant camp next. I was apprehensive but the giant was pure melee, which made holding him up with the Merc and Root much safer and easier. He dropped the second piece of the key and the quest moved on to Spectre Isle.

Either the Spectre was the easiest of the three or I was getting my groove back. The Merc and I disposed of the scythe-wielding psychopath with no problems. I put the final part of the key into the container, hit Combine and presto! Completed quest, completed key.

Back in the tower I clicked on the door and nothing happened. I clicked on the key instead and got another quest. Then the door opened. Inside, as promised, I found a single room with five mobs just standing there, glaring at me: two crocodiles, two skeletons and another Spectre.

I thought I'd start with the Spectre so I tried to root him, only to get a message telling me I couldn't attack him at all. Then I noticed my quest had updated. It was telling me to kill the crocs first.

Multiple comments on several forums had led me to believe the fights inside the tower would be almost insultingly easy. They are not. Not if you're an averagely-geared Druid played by an out-of-practice player, anyway.

I won't go through the whole play-by-play but it was tense. Druids tend to like large, open areas with plenty of kiting room. They don't shine in closed rooms with very little space to move around. Even less so when they have to fight mobs that can't be snared.

Still, the crocs weren't too bad. They came one at a time and the Merc had no trouble taunting them. I needed to med after each of them and the Merc needed a heal or two but it was fine.

The skeletons were harder and the whole thing almost fell apart when the second aggroed before the first was done. Luckily the one we were fighting was down to about 10% health so I nuked him hard and we got the other one under control. At the end of that fight, though, Cassis and the Merc both needed a good sit down.

That just left the Spectre, who worryingly conned yellow, meaning he was a level or two higher than us. And he was a bloody handful, let me tell you! 

The fight came down to Cassis frantically chain-healing the Merc with her only halfway-decent heal, Greater Healing, which only gave the Merc back about 5%  health a cast. I tried to keep my two good DoTs on but it was a risk dropping a heal to recast. In the end, it came down to the wire, with the Merc falling when the Specter was at about 5% itself and Cassis was not much better herself.

The scythe was swinging my way and I was casting what looked like it would be my final nuke when the Spectre just up and imploded. The combat log mysteriously reads "a withered memory hits a withered memory for 409 points of magic damage from Sweeping Scythe Slash" so maybe the spook clumsily cut his own head off.

Whatever, I won! I collected my winnings (More event currency.), looked out of the window (Sand.) checked the half-buried treasure chest (A prop.) and zoned out. I did go up a floor to collect the starter for the next access quest but I haven't done anything with it yet. All I know is it's in Lavastorm and they gave me a shovel.

I look forward to seeing what kind of trouble Cassis can dig up for herself next.