Scars Of Destruction - A Key Feature

When the details of the latest EverQuest II expansion, Scars of Destruction, were revealed, I was weirdly excited by one minor feature - the Petamorph Keyring. For anyone who doesn't play the game that phrase is going to require a little explaining.

EQII is and has always been a game that makes enormous play of illusions. Whatever you choose to make your character look like at creation doesn't even represent a baseline for what you'll be looking at for most of your time in the game. You can look like just about anything.

There are many, many ways to change your appearance including but not limited to your gender, species or even your kingdom. You can start out as a human and end up as a rock. This happens all the time, whether you like it or not, because quest after quest has you turn into something other than what you were when you spoke to the questgiver.

There are spells and abilities that allow you to change your form and also an enormous number of objects you can use to impersonate anything from a tiny rat to a full-size dragon. You can change size and shape until you shrink yourself so small you can barely be seen - I was at the bank last night next to someone who'd managed to make themselves both look like a mushroom and be the actual size of one.

You're looking at the highest quality, highest level Necro pet and that's what someone thought the default should be. Is it any wonder illusions are so popular?

Since this can understandably get to be a bit much after a while, you can toggle the whole thing off in Options, something I tend to do after the novelty wears off. From then on you will look like yourself no matter what illusion you're under, even though every NPC will treat you as though you're still in costume.

Something very similar also applies to Familiars, Mounts and Combat Pets. There's both an Appearance and an Equipped slot for Familiars and Mounts, allowing you to combine the best stats withthe best looks.

Combat pets, by which I mostly mean the undead summoned by Necromancers, elementals by Conjurors and warders by Beastlords, can all be switched between the different appearances provided both by the different levels of ability and the various qualities of spells. At least Necros and Mages can do it that way. I forget exactly what it is that Beastlords can do but it's something along the same lines.

That's about all I can think of without looking it up. I'm aware it's by no means all the ways the game allows or compels you to change your form - or the forms of the entourage that swirls around you, like a family of ducklings following their mother. And that's just the bodies. I haven't even mentioned what you - and they - could be wearing...

There, now! Isn't that better?

Many of those illusions are accessed either through the UI or from your spellbook, where they take up no space and get in no-one's way. Some, however, far too many in my opinion, come in the form of items you need to click to activate. These all take up bag space.

This actually isn't too much of an issue for most of my characters, who tend to have far greater issues with hoarding to worry about a few illusions. Before the expansion dropped, for example, I spent an hour clearing some space in my Berserker's bags in readiness. It was a horrific task.

EQII is insanely generous with storage space and I've made quite an effort to take advantage of every opportunity to expand my storage capacity. In just the packs he carries around with him, my Berserker has 502 slots. When I went to check on Tuesday evening fewer than a dozen of those were free. 

Even when I'd cleared out everything that didn't require a lot of thinking about, he'd only managed to empty 88, the equivalent of a single bag. The other seven (You get six regular slots plus two for specific kinds of items, not counting your quiver.) were all still stuffed with junk that "might come in useful one day".

Of the remaining four hundred and some slots, only a dozen were taken up with illusions and just one by a Petamorph Wand, which the Berserker can't actually use, not having access to any combat pets. This feature does nothing for him. 

It's different for pet classes.

When I checked in with my Necromancer this morning, she had more than twenty-five slots taken up with Petamorph Wands. And I realise now that I still haven't explained what they are, although the name pretty much explains the function.

They're clickies that change the appearance of combat pets. Yes, combat pets already have an innate ability to change form, as discussed above, but these handy doodads let you turn them into totally different creatures altogether.

According to EQ2Wire, there are more than a hundred and fifty of these things. More are being added all the time. You can buy them in the cash shop, they get given away as holiday rewards, you get them from quests...

Until now, I've been wary of collecting them because of the space they take up but I'd like to have as many as I can get. They're fun but they're practical, too. Many of the default pets are annoying in one way or another and it's often useful to be able to change them into something that crawls or flies or just doesn't make a really annoying sound in the background all the frickin' time.

That was why I was excited to hear we'd be able to add them to a Keyring. A keyring is effectively a UI element in which you can store items that would otherwise take up bag space. Originally, if I'm remembering correctly, it was added to EverQuest to store the actual keys that were needed to access certain zones, particularly Planar instances, but over the years it's become the generic term for any UI-based storage solution, no matter what you put in it.

EverQuest has made great play of the "Keyring" conceit over the years but I have a feeling this might be the first so-named in EQII. Lots of things you'd think might have used a keyring, like Mounts and Familiars, already have their own UI tabs, so I guess it hasn't been deemed necessary until now.

Almost the first thing I did when I was able to log into the expansion was to get my Necro out and start playing with the new toy. There didn't seem to be any hints or explanations so i just started clicking things and that worked nicely.

All you have to do is right-click a Petamorph Wand and the context menu now offers the option to add it to the keyring. There's a warning that it's an irreversible action but since you can only add Attuned or No Trade wands to the ring that seems like an unnecessarily cautious step. I mean, what else are you going to do with them?

I started adding all of the Necro's wands, one after another, until without warning it stopped working. There weren't any error messages so at first I thought there was something different about the wands I was trying to add. A close look didn't suggest anything but after a while I figured out the reason.

The process had stalled because the Petamorph Keyring operates on the same principle as the Wardrobe, meaning it has a limited number of slots. I'd filled them all, which was why no more wands were going in.

The basic allowance is ten slots, which shows up as five rows. You can expand that a row at a time at the cost of 50DBC per. What the upper limit might be or if there is one I don't know but I would imagine you'll be able to add enough slots for all those hundred and fifty wands and more. 

I'm sure there will be people who'll complain about the cost and claim it's some kind of money grab. For subscribers, though, who get 500DBC as a stipend every month, and who also get a 10% discount on all cash shop purchases, it seems pretty harmless to me.

In fact, as I've said many times, I'm always glad of something to spend my Daybreak Cash on. I have almost 35k on my main account now and I rarely find much I want to buy. There are only so many Prestige Homes you can decorate, after all.

I bought another twenty slots immediately and started filling them up. Unfortunately, I attuned all my wands without looking at them and only after I'd done it did I discover I had a few duplicates. The keyring helpfully tells you when you try to add a wand it's already holding but by then I'd rendered them all untradeable so I just had to destroy them.

Never mind. Plenty more where those came from. And I'll be looking out for them now. I have Mages and Beastlords who can make good use of them and they all heve keyrings of their own. Yes, the keyring is character-based, not account based. I'm sure that will annoy some people as well but I personally prefer to keep my characters cleanly separated whenever possible so it suits me just fine.

And with that out of the way, I suppose I'd better go take a look at the actual content of the expansion. I got an in-game letter from the Far Seas Traders, asking me to go help with something in the new place so I'm going to start off with the Crafting Timeline.

I pretty much have to. I still don't have a max level Adventurer to start the main quest. Although I do have a level 130 boost...