Question:
What could make me download and install EverQuest on my new PC, given I haven't bothered until now?
Answer:
A 300% XP Bonus and a free Level 115 Character Boost.
I wasn't going to post today due to laziness but then I saw this news story at MassivelyOP and I thought I ought to share. EverQuest just turned 27 and in the tradition of MMORPGs that means it's the one giving out presents.
They're good ones, too:
All players will receive the following for free:
- Anniversary Kickoff Event
- 300% XP
- 300% Rare NPC spawn chance
- 245% loot
- 190% coin
- 200% alternate currency
- 175% Item evolution experience for all players!
- (The kickoff ends March 22 at 11:00 p.m. PT)
- A Maestro's Baton Ornament for all your characters. (One per character; available until April 20, 2026, at 11:00 p.m. PT.) *
- After the anniversary kickoff event, all players will receive 150% experience gains for all players! (Starting March 23 at 12:00 a.m. and ending on April 1, 2026, at 1:00 a.m. PT.)
The celebrations come in two parts, it seems. There's a week with everything turned up to eleven, then a second week when everything calms the heck back down. Even then, 150% isn't chopped liver. (I'm assuming everyone hates liver...)
Of all of those bonuses, as an old school EQ Player it's the massive xp bonus that gets my attention. What we wouldn't have done for a bonus like that, back in the day, amirite?
So why did I even bother patching up? Well, there's not much suspense to be wrung out of it, is there, seeing how I slammed the reason right up at the top there in the biggest point size available. It's the free Level 115 boost.
115's not the cap. It's ten levels shy. The cap, as of this 27th Anniversary, is 125. Tunare forfend they'd ever give out a boost to max level. If they did that, Luclin might explode!
Unlike the perks listed above, the boost is only for subscribers but that's fine. My highest character on the account I pay for is just 87. (Hmm. That means I must have done a couple of levels on him after I boosted him. I bet that was on Overseer...)
I have two Level 85s on that account, as well, both of them boosted. No-one on the account has ever really been played. All the characters I care about are on a different account, one for which I canceled the subscription long ago. Old story. Not going into all that again.
The F2P account doesn't need the boost, anyway. My Magician there already dinged 115, back when that was the cap, through a combination of going out and killing things and staying at home doing Overseer missions. She can't benefit from the boost and anyway, as I said earlier, if I really cared about leveling her up, I'd have been keeping up with those missions. There's no faster or easier way to level solo.
So, realistically, there was absolutely no point in bothering to re-install the game at all, was there? It's just... free stuff...
What would really be fun, now I come to think about it, would be to take one of my low-level characters and blitz through some zones with a merc and that 300% bonus, possibly topped up with an xp potion, if the bonuses stack and if I have any left. It'd be pointless, sure, but it would be fun and I haven't done it for a while.
I just might do that. And if you'll take my advice, if you have an old EverQuest account lying around gathering dust, now might be the time to brush it off and take it for a spin. After all, it's not going to cost you anything but time.
Posts
Actually that might get me back in to check it out. The last time I played I had gotten an Iskar Necromancer up to around 60 or so the old fashioned way. I had completely lost the thread on that quest chain that supposed to get you to the cap, something about Griffin feathers that I had literally no idea how to find if I recall correctly. The Heroe's Journey (I think that's what it's called) will definitely get you going, but it would take a more skilled player than me to follow it all the way up. At some point each step is documented more and more poorly, until it starts to feel like questing in FFXI (not a complement). For the last step I tried to do, I had found the right zone (maybe) but had no idea where the mob I wanted spawned, and it was a mountainous zone that was difficult to navigate.
ReplyDeleteOut of desperation I decided to change gears and old school it. I found a dungeon to starting grinding. About week of evenings doing that, and I was done. I think he's still standing in some random hallway down there even as I am typing this. In any case, grinding the crap out of mobs is a dungeon would probably be more palatable with a giant XP bonus.
Of couse, it's been so long now I would also have to spend an evening or two just relearning the game if I wanted to seriously play it again. So we'll see. Thanks for brigning this to my attention regardless.
From memory - and it's been a few years since I last did it - soloing EQ is very comfortable up to about 60 (With a mercenary, of course.) It starts to get harder quite quickly after that, by which I mean slower as much as more challenging. I found it too slow to be much fun any more once I got to the eighties although before Overseer came along, I did quite a few levels, on and off, in the high eighties and low nineties. You have to pick your spot and make sure you have the Hot Zone and the right HZ missions running to make progress at that point and it starts to become very formulaic if you're trying to optimize it.
DeleteA 300% bonus, though, makes everywhere a hot zone and more. And I wonder if the HZ bonuses stack on top? If I get time I'll try and test that out but it's absolutely true that it'll probably take longer to get the hang of playing again than the bonuses are going to hang around!