I Go Shopping

In what could all too easily be seen as some kind of excercise in wilful self-parody following this recent post, touching heavily as it did on my inability or unwillingness either to make or follow plans, this morning I sat down at my PC fully intending to play Black Desert, only to find myself spending nearly three hours shopping for clothes in EverQuest instead. 

All I meant to do was pick up the Overseer rewards I'd failed to collect the evening before because I got wrapped up in Guild Wars 2's Lunar Festival. First doing it then writing about it. All I meant to do in EQ was grab the loot, set the new missions and log out. Five minutes, tops.

Only it just so happened that when I logged in I spotted there were well over two hundred people trading in the Bazaar. Of late, numbers have been down, sometimes as low as a hundred and fifty. I haven't seen the count go over two hundred since well before Christmas. 

I don't really know why it's been quiet on the trading floor but I suspect it may be because when a new expansion comes out people have better things to do than afk in the Bazaar. Not everyone has an alternate account set up just to trade and people want to get out there and play the new content. Also expansions create shake-ups and the market takes a while to adjust. Maybe some people just prefer to let prices settle before jumping in. Who knows?

Whatever the reason, it seemed like a good time to go shopping. The ever-growing pile of platinum I've been adding to since autumn has been burning a hole in my pocket for weeks and there's always the prospect of bargains when an expansion starts to shake out.

In EverQuest, of course, nothing's ever that simple. What might have been a few minutes' browsing and buying turned into a full morning of research. It very nearly turned into an epic excursion into the frozen wastes of Velious, the new, high-level one where a solo player even at the level cap most likely has a life expectancy measured in microseconds.

I wouldn't know from experience just how dangerous it might have been. I have, as yet, managed to avoid finding out for myself. The furthest I've ventured is the safe camp at the entrance to 2019's Torment of Velious. For a while there this morning it seemed like there was a chance I might be making the trek across Eastern Wastes to Crystal Caverns but fortunately sanity prevailed. 

To cut a very long and convoluted story short, after about an hour or so of research I was able to establish that:

1. My unsubscribed Magician can wear Torment of Velious Tier One armor
2. ToV T1 armor patterns are tradeable
3. They're cheap to buy in the Bazaar right now
4. The items you need to combine inside them to make the finished armor can be bought from NPCs
5. One of the items is for sale in Plane of Knowledge
6. The other is for sale in Crystal Caverns
7. That item is also tradeable
   
8. A couple of enterprising players have thought to buy up a bunch of said vendor-sold items in Crystal Caverns and put them up for sale in the Bazaar
9. And they haven't gouged the price much at all.

I'm aware that some players in every game see the re-selling of vendor-sold items via the broker or auction house as tantamount to explotation. I've even know developers to try to put a stop to it. I have always found that to be a very short-sighted view. 

Yes, it can be a scam or a rip-off, paricularly when the price is jacked up by orders of magnitude or the items are extremely easy to find on vendors. In many games, though, the saving in time, effort and especially risk that re-selling provides fully justifies the practice. Far from being vilified as exploitation it ought to be welcomed as a form of community service.

 

In this case one of the vendors was re-selling the 25k item for 30k, a mark-up I was more than willing to pay for the convenience of not having to run half-way across Norrath. Not to mention the inevitable painful and humiliating series of deaths that often come with breaking trail in any new high-level zone.

I scooped up enough to make a full set of visible armor. Or I would have if I could have counted up to eight. Then I made the armor. Or I would have if I'd had a spare inventory space for the conatainer. What with having to go back to the first trader three times, then to five different traders for the best-priced patterns, then to yet another because one guy actually repriced the pattern I was going to buy as I was standing in front of him, then having to log in my own trader to swap out all the trade goods and materals my Mage was carrying to make space for the combines, the whole thing took quite a while.

It was worth it. When I was done not only had the Magician's stats taken a significant step up but for the first time in as long as I can remember she was looking pretty much how I wanted her to look. For years she was stuck with a sickly green outfit that looked like a mildewed bathrobe. This last year she's been looking a lot better in red and I've been happy with that but I prefer the appearance of the Flameweaver set. It's deliciously ironic to look icy cool when you're setting the world on fire.

I didn't stop there, either. I went through every non-visible slot and checked to see if there was anything better available. I found upgrades for several slots including possibly the most important and hardest to come by of all for a Magician, an earring with the Enhanced Minion focus.

 

That alone set me back half a million platinum but it was very well worth it. The Mage's existing earring had Enhanced Minion XVIII, too low to affect the pets she can summon at 115. The new one, the only tradeable, non-prestige upgrade currently available (I checked) is EM XXI. It'll work on her current pets and also, with diminishing effects, on the first few she gets in the next expansion that comes with a level cap increase. I sincerely hope whoever's in charge of itemization will throw her another bone after that.

The only problem is the pet she has right now is so ludicrously overpowered from dozens of raid-level buffs it received when we were sitting in the Guild Lobby for weeks soaking up MGBs that any new pet she summons will be feeble by comparison, even if it's higher level. Before she goes hunting with it she'll need to spend a couple of days afk in the Pile to buff it up.

Which isn't going to be a problem because she's not going hunting any time soon. It's entirely possible she might not go hunting at all until the level cap changes because why would she? She's not going to get any upgrades that way and she certainly can't make money any faster than she's making it right now by standing around, doing nothing.

And money's just rolling in right now. By the time I'd finished shopping I'd spent around a million platinum but I'll have it all back in a couple of weeks. She already picked up a quarter of a million in takings today, when she swapped mats onto her trading partner. 

You might wonder what the point of it all is. I would, myself, if it wasn't for the simple fact that I get as much involvement and satisfaction out of upgrading her gear the way I've just described as I ever got from hunting for it. Quite possibly more.

It's not all about the killing, after all. Sometimes it's just about the dressing-up.

Learn From Experience

Here's a little story. Some of you may have heard it before. If you've played EverQuest it may even have happened to you, long ago, back in the day when things like this used to happen. Of course, they don't happen any more, even in EverQuest. Those days are long gone. Of course they are.

So, a couple of days ago Daybreak were doing some major platform maintenance. Might have been something to do with the recent sale, might just be start of year housekeeping, who knows? Doesn't matter. The point is, all the servers in every game were down for a while. 

In EQ that meant every character trading in the Bazaar, online or offline, got kicked back to character select. Normally I cash out my trader towards the end of the week then I restock for the weekend, when the servers are busiest and trade is brisk, but since he was available I thought I might as well do it early.

As you can see from the screenshot to the left, at character select there are a bunch of buttons just below the list of characters. I've always thought it was an odd design choice to have the Delete Character button there. It's just asking for trouble.

Don't worry! I didn't press that one by mistake. And even if I had, SOE long ago added a confirmation step to take the pressure off customer service. No, there's another button below "delete" that reads "Enter Tutorial". Can't say I've really paid much attention to it in the past.

Well, I will from now on.

You'll notice in the shot to the left that button is greyed out. That's because you can't go back to the tutorial once you reach level ten. On the main account I use these days when I play EverQuest I don't have anyone low enough to use it.

Also, as you can see if you look closely, you can see I'm already over the limit for character slots allowed under Daybreak's current free to play ruleset. In fact, I have seven playable characters out of a maximum of six thanks to some grandfathering rights, which is also probably why my account is flagged "Silver Player", a category I'm not sure exists any more for new players.

All this nit-picking detail is going to mean something in a bit. Patience!

If I was to take a screenshot of the other account I use for EQ, the one on which I have my Bazaar trader set up, you'd be able to see that there I have some characters who can revisit the Mines of Gloomingdeep, should they so desire.  Not that they would. I never liked that tutorial although I'm aware it's quite well thought of by some.

One of those characters is my Bazaar trader himself. He's a level two dwarf paladin and the only reason I can think of that he's not level one is that he must have dinged on discovery xp getting there from Kaladim. If EQ has discovery xp, which I'm not sure it does. 

However he managed it, he's never done anything else since. He lives in the Bazaar. The farthest he ever goes is down the ramp from his trading platform to the bank on the floor below and back. He's wearing the minimal gear he started with and all ten of his inventory slots are filled with trading bags, which in turn are filled with everything he has to sell.

One of the unusual features about the Bazaar when it was introduced with the Shadows of Luclin expansion nineteen years ago was that weight didn't exist there. At the time I think even coin still had weight but even if it didn't everything else certainly did. Weight-reducing bags were an essential accoutrement for all serious adventurers and it was common to see encumbered characters crawling towards vendors to try and sell their heaviest loot so they could move normally again.

In those stricter times it was even possible to find yourself so overweight you could literally no longer move at all, something which led to quite a few comedy moments when incautious players unthinkingly zoned their traders out of the weightless Bazaar to grab something from Plane of Knowledge, only to find the full burden of their bulging packs had nailed them to the ground. Not least because the tradeoff for Bazaar ten-slot bags being extremely cheap was they weigh a ton so you can't easily use them anywhere else.

It happened to me once. I had to get Mrs Bhagpuss to bring her druid over to buff me so I could get back through the door. 

Once bitten, though, eh? Not going to make that mistake again. And anyway, didn't they change Plane of Knowledge to have the same weight restrictions, or lack of them, as the Bazaar?

Spoiler! No, they didn't! And how do I know that? Did I assume otherwise and find out the hard way when I took my trader for a stroll across PoK? I wish! No, it was nothing that simple.

Remember that Enter Tutorial button I mentioned earlier? Think of it as Chekhov's gun. Yes, dear reader, I pressed the damned thing. And shot myself in the foot.

By mistake, of course. And I noticed even as I did it. Just not fast enough to do anything about it.

So there I was in Gloomingdeep. Even before I tried to move I guessed  what would happen when I did : nothing. I wasn't sure, though. I had hope. Maybe there is no encumbrance so bad it can't be shuffled off, these days. 

I play the game. You'd think I'd know but I didn't. I can explain. 

Modern gear in EverQuest has lots of stats. Even at low levels. If you play through the tutorial you'll emerge with enough strength to lift a carthorse let alone a few bags. The character I play most often has a strength of 1203 and she's a magician. She doesn't even need strength.

It's been a long time since any character I play in EverQuest hit their encumbrance level. Well, until yesterday. My paladin-trader was something like 360/60. He could not move. Okay, he could turn around on the spot, three hundred and sixty degrees, because physics works like that in Norrath. Take a step in any direction though? Not happening.

At this point I paused to take stock of my options. Walking out, even at a slow crawl? Off the table. Gating? Nope - melee classes don't get the Gate spell. 

How about "Return Home", the option SOE put in as a mercy to melees so they could at least log in somewhere safe? It's right there at character select. You can see it in the picture above. I logged him out and... just as in that picture, it was greyed out. Apparently it has a cooldown. The timer resets when you log in. How long for I'm not sure but longer than I wanted to wait.

Okay then. I have several accounts. How about I log another one in and send someone to the Gloomingdeep Mines to rescue the pally? Maybe a Druid who can open a portal to Plane of Knowledge. 

Yeah, that didn't work. Got to be under level ten to go to the tutorial, remember? I considered making a new character who would be able to go there, only I was over the character cap for the account. And anyway, what would they do? Carry him?

I had another think and as I was thinking a couple of players ran past me. In the Tutorial. What are the odds? Maybe I could ask one of them for help. I conned them. One was level two, the other was level six. Can't see them helping much. Why humiliate myself?

Maybe I had something in my bags that would help. There are plenty of "clickies" in EQ, items you can click to make something happen, like a port to somewhere. I checked. Guess what? I'd long since stripped the paladin of everything that might take up a valuable trading space. Nothing useful there.

I thought of trying /stuck. Every mmorpg has a command like that to save customer service from being bothered with players hung up on bits of scenery. I tried it. Command not recognized. No, I remember now, EQ never did have anything like that. It's a social game. You're supposed to call a friend to get you out of trouble. I've been that friend a few times. Only it's a long time since I spoke to anyone in EQ.

Next idea - Ranger Gate! That always works. Ranger gate is when a melee class needs to get back to bind in a hurry so they go up to the nearest NPC or mob that cons red and poke it with their sword. So-called because... well, rangers. Under level five you just wake up at your bind spot with all your stuff. A druid could come get him from there. 

I tried to attack the nearest NPC. Couldn't reach him. Tried taunting him. Out of range. Looked for a ranged weapon. Didn't have one.

Bugger. 

At this point I was out of ideas. Time to check google. I found a thread on the forums about getting unstuck. Someone had linked to a list of items that might help. Top of that list was Book of Knowledge, a five-charge clickie that ports you to Plane of Knowledge (where else?). 

And where do you get a Book of Knowledge? From the Gift of Legacies Lost. And where do you get one of those? /Claim. 

Aha! That magical trove of freebies dear to the heart of every longtime EQ and EverQuest II player. The place where all the promos and special event items and bribes and anniversary gifts and expansion pre-order bonuses languish, forgotten and unclaimed. 

Best of all, you can grab them from anywhere, even in the tutorial. I checked and I had a mere 990 or so Gifts of Legacies Lost still pending. So I claimed one. Only one problem. It comes as a gift-wrapped present that goes inside a bag but to use the contents you have to open the gift, which then turns into a bag filled with stuff. And you can't put a full bag inside another bag. You need an open inventory slot. Which the pally didn't have, what with him being a trader and all.

Fortunately he'd had a pretty good few days on the trading floor. Quite a few of his bags were only partly full. It took some swapping about but eventually I managed to empty one of his bags into another and then put the empty bag in as well. Presto! Empty inventory slot. 

I got the Book of Knowledge, clicked it, and presto again! Gate to PoK. Geez! Nightmare over.

Oh yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you? Remember when I said I was pretty sure they'd given Plane of knowledge the same weightlessness as the Bazaar? Yeah, that never happened. Still couldn't move.

At least now the paladin was somewhere my other account could reach him. I got the magician out. She was going to take his money and give him more mats to sell anyway so why not save some time. She could levitate him and he could float his way home. 

Apparently being levitated has no effect on encumbrance. Didn't know that. 

In the end I logged in my druid, brought her over, gave the pally a blast of the old reliable, Spirit of Wolf, plus the highest strength buff he could take and that was just enough to let him waddle off across the grass, back to the Bazaar. The whole escapade took about forty minutes or a quarter of the time it's taken me to write it all down.

The moral of this story is Never Press the Wrong Button. Accidents will happen, though, so the real takeaway has to be Pick the Right Person for the Job. Next time I need a Bazaar trader I'll quickly level a Druid into the teens and then something like this can never happen again.

No, next time it'll be something else.

Big Blue Diamonds : EverQuest

There's no question that EverQuest is currently my main MMORPG. How weird is that?

I seem to have hit a sweet spot. The last time this happened was probably when I discovered Jewel of Atiki, a strangely-named but delightful zone from the 2007's The Buried Sea. That was four years ago, when I was doing my Lesson and my Hot Zone daily for xp, then keeping myself busy farming plat to pay for armor upgrades in the Bazaar.

That seems to be what works for me because I'm doing it again and loving it. Just as it did back in my days in the Jewel, it helps enormously that I'm hunting in the light, sunny, open zones of 2011's Veil of Alaris. It seems like a delightful expansion, not least when compared to the oppressive, claustrophobic gloom of the inexplicably-preferred House of Thule, through which all re-starters and Heroic characters are funnelled. So glad to be out of that miserable hole at last.

As I posted a few days ago, the mage dinged 106 and I re-subbed her account. As I also explained, I was waiting for that specific level because that's when you can equip Conflagrant armor. In my particular case, Arch Convoker's Conflagrant, the variant intended specifically for the Magician class.

I was dreading hunting sharks when Franklin Teek gave me the task but it turns out there are loads of them right next to the docks, including this huge named.

It's not cheap but it is affordable. By watching the prices in the Bazaar carefully I've managed to upgrade ten slots. That leaves eleven to go, not counting ammo and power source.

I haven't been keeping a count of the exact cost but I must have spent somewhere around a quarter of a million platinum so far. I raided my Beastlord's piggy bank for 50k and bought a bag of platinum worth 13k with some loyalty tokens but mostly I've been farming grey mobs in much older zones.

Money flows in quite comfortably from the xp-level content I'm doing but when it comes to cash drops, EQ has a quirk I think is probably unusual in the genre. I can't speak for current content, which I haven't seen, but in pretty much every expansion from... well, thinking about it, from the original, base game, the standard moneymakers remain the same: gems.

Diamonds sell to a vendor for 190 platinum. Blue diamonds sell for 238pp. Various other gems sell for somewhere around the same amount. The main change between expansions seems to be not so much what gems drop as how often, although even that isn't consistent.

Hunting underwater in this zone is amazingly pleasant, not least because of the spectacular way the water amplifies every spell effect.

When I'm out doing my daily double xp Lesson in the level 95 Hot Zone, Sarith, City of Tides, the sharks Franklin Teek insists on sending me to kill drop diamonds and blue diamonds. So did the boogymen and samhain in Fear Itself. So did the reavers in Meldrath's Majestic Mansion.

Gems are great but high-value stackable mob drops can bring in as much or more. Clockworks in all of the Meldrath-related zones from Secrets of Faydwer (also 2007 - two expansions a year back then) explode into showers of cogs and springs when you smash them and those parts sell to vendors for a lot.

I guess those count as body parts if you're a clockwork, which makes sense because mob body parts have been a vendor staple since the game started. In other MMORPGs it's often barely worth giving bag space to fur and fangs but in EQ those crazy NPCs pay top dollar for the most repulsive and objectively worthless organs. I've always wondered what they do with them, although since no NPC vendor ever leaves his spot it's a bit of a moot point what they could do.

The final consideration when deciding where to farm is what players are currently buying on Barter. Incredibly conveniently, these days you can open the Barter window wherever you are in the game and sell directly out of your bags. No more running around the mazelike corridors looking for that one guy who buys writing ink.

The streets of the city are good, safe hunting. I'd do the quests but for that I need to learn the language. All in good time.

It's nearly all tradeskill materials they want, of course, but not necessarily the obvious ones. Many older mats retain decent value but many more are utterly worthless. Also, when selling things that are new to you, you have to be careful to check what the NPCs are paying before you put your silks and ores in the hand of a reaching player. Some buyers are less than scrupulous about offering a fraction of the coin you could get from cashing out at the nearest vendor.

Gems notwithstanding, it's fair to say the more recent the expansion, the more valuable the drops. If you're focused on making the most money per minute, though, it's makes sense to go somewhere you can cut the mobs down like corn. The individual drops may be worth a little less - although unless you go back almost to the beginning of the game it will only be a little - but being able to pull and clear whole rooms in seconds more than makes up the difference.

I've been experimenting, trying to find the most profitable, fastest, least annoying, most enjoyable farm. All of those. Asking a lot, I know.

I've tried half a dozen zones in Planes of Power. A lot of older guides to making money suggest the Plane of Fire and it is indeed very good for gems, plus there are trade mats there still that sell for hundreds of plat a time. Unfortunately, it's a hideous, ugly, depressing zone. I don't really want to spend more than half an hour there.

The aptly-named Beast's Domain is the next zone along. A lovely, blue-green forest with loads of kiting space.

Few of the PoP zones have aged well. My favorite to farm is Ruins of Lxanvom, better known as the Crypt of Decay. It's also stunningly ugly but as an underground dungeon with corridors and tunnels that seems more acceptable. Also it's relatively small and very simple to navigate.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's fairly popular for exactly the reasons I go there, so its not unusual to zone in to find everything already dead. Luckily the respawn rate is fairly fast and once people have cleared it they tend not to hang around for a second run. I know I don't.

All of the aforementioned Meldrath zones are good but I've done a lot of those over the years and I could do without the clanking. A nice alternative I've been trying is Bloodmoon Keep, a dungeon from the same expansion, refreshingly clockwork-free. All wereorcs, spiders and undead, that one.

I tend to farm until I run out of bag space or until I get tired, both of which clock in at around about an hour. My average for a run is somewhere close to 10,000 platinum but I'm fairly sure I can improve on that.

I probably need to, if only because I've bought up all the cheaper Conflagrant pieces now. The rest are going to run 40-50k a pop, which means I need to make about twice what I've already spent. I was very fortunate to get the chest and legs for about half the going rate, though, so who knows what bargains may turn up if I keep my eyes open?

From long experience I do know that I'll just about have had enough of farming after a couple of weeks. It's one of those activities that starts out as really good fun and ends up being a chore. For now, though, I'm still getting that thrill every time I see my balance go back up after a spending spree.

With a bit of luck I should be able to fill out all the remaining slots by the time my month's sub runs out. After that I imagine I'll be ready for a break, anyway.

Learning Curve: EverQuest

If there's one thing you can be sure of when playing an MMORPG it's that you never know all there is to know. It doesn't matter if you have twenty max-level characters or you've been playing since beta. Never mind whether you lead a bleeding-edge raid guild or spend your free time writing guides and correcting the wiki, there's always, always going to be something you didn't know.

EverQuest is nineteen years old this year and I've been playing for eighteen of them. Over nearly two decades I've levelled more characters than I can remember (waaaay more...). I've played on servers that have merged into servers that have merged into servers until my character limits split at the seams.

I've started over so many times I have a method. I know where to go, what to do, what to buy, what to sell to bootstrap myself into comfort. I forget details but they soon comes back when I start playing again. Or so I've always believed...

As I mentioned in my last post, the Barter system forms a crucial element in any low-level EverQuest money-making plan. Bartering was introduced with the Dragons of Norrath expansion in 2005. DoN was the expansion that followed Omens of War, which was the expansion that followed the one that almost put EverQuest out of business, Gates of Discord.

The combination of a disastrous expansion (GoD), the launch of a sequel (EQ2) and the appearance of a ferocious competitor (WoW), all in the same year, was a body-blow that staggered EQ badly but there was no knock-out blow. Omens of War, which cleaned up GoD's mess, was much better received, EQ2 stumbled out of the gate and World of Warcraft managed to gain a reputation in EQ veteran circles as an easy game for kiddies, best ignored.

Swimming from across Lake Rathetear fro m Arena to South Karana. If there's a faster route I'd like to hear about it.

By the time I came back to EQ, Dragons of Norrath was old news. Everyone was anticipating the arrival of the new expansion, Depths of Darkhollow. As I check the wiki for the dates, the cadence of these expansions is breathtaking. Between October 2002 (Planes of Power) and November 2007 (Secrets of Faydwer) SOE produced and released eleven expansions, all of which (with the exception of the mini-expansion Legacy of Ykesha) dwarf just about anything released as "expansions" for most MMOs nowadays.

Some expansions added game-changing innovations: instant transport from a central hub with PoP's Plane of Knowledge; mercenaries in Seeds of Destruction;  the Task system in OOW; instanced dungeons in Lost Dungeons of Norrath. Others sought to shift the entire direction of the game - The Serpent's Spine in 2006 claimed to render the entire first 75 levels fully soloable as well as allowing all characters to regain mana and health quickly as soon as they were out of combat.

Not every new idea worked or was taken up with enthusiasm by the players. DoD's Monster Missions had their moment in the sun purely because of an exploit. Once that was fixed did anyone ever use them again? Prophecy of Ro, my nomination for EQ's weakest-ever expansion, offered player-set traps and "spheres of influence", neither of which have I used, seen anyone else use or even heard anyone mention. And then there was the "voice macro system" from OOW... no, me neither.

I don't remember them being called "Adult Elephants". I thought they were just "Elephants".

Of all the many great additions we've enjoyed over the years, quality of life changes that make modern EQ so very much more enjoyable and satisfying to play than "Classic" ever was, Barter comes close to the top of my list. It's been so useful that I've never minded the clunky, inconvenient implementation that requires not just a visit to The Bazaar but a fiddly trip through the maze-like corridors of the Blue halls to find the player-vendor with whom your character needs to interact.

A trip to the Bazaar to type /barter and bring up the search window to see what people are buying has been a rite of passage for all my new characters for years. Many a hunting session has ended with a Gate to PoK and a run to the Bazaar.

Then last night I discovered I'd been wasting my time. Not by using the barter system - that's as essential and rewarding as ever it was. No, it's just that I never needed to leave my hunting grounds to to cash in!

I'd have known sooner if I read my own blog or took my own advice. I've recommended Almar's Guides more than once but it seems I haven't been reading them closely enough.

I linked to Almar's Bazaar Guide in the last post to save myself having to explain The Bazaar. I checked first to be sure it was relevant but I trust Almar so I didn't do much more than a skim-read. Then last night something happened in game that made me go back and read it again, properly.

You can never kill too many aviaks.

I was in South Karana, down at the birdhouse, killing Aviaks for great xp and pretty good loot, when someone in General Chat asked a question about how to make some plat at low levels. Vox, the new (as in five years old) server where I'm currently playing has excellent General chat - lively, well-mannered, helpful. Answers and suggestions were offered.

Someone was explaining Barter and I was half following the conversation when I saw something that made me exclaim out loud in surprise and disbelief. They were saying that you could check barter from anywhere in the game and then sell straight from your bags where you stood!

Could that be true? Right there, mid-fight (my pet was doing the fighting and my merc was doing the healing so my involvement was optional) I typed /barter and the window opened. It was like a miracle. I grabbed the corner and stretched the window so I could see all of it and there, next to every listed item, was a blue "SELL" button.

I searched my bag for something I could sell. Anything. I didn't have anything anyone wanted. For the rest of the session I scanned my loot obsessively as it came in, looking for an item I could use as a test. Finally a Steel Ingot dropped. They're always in demand. Only not today.

Killing lions in the vain hope of getting the elusive High Quality Lion Skin, curently trading on /barter for 10,000 plat.
In 19 years I've seen one drop.

Eventually an Aviak Rook gave me some Sivril Ore. Someone on Barter wanted a few pieces for some arcane purpose. I clicked on the SELL button... and the ore vanished! A platinum piece clinked into my purse and the whole of Norrath changed in an instant.

Being able to search and sell remotely is game-changing. It allows me to find a spot where things people want to buy drop, then stay there to farm them without having to gate to clear my bags and sell. Given the time it takes to travel and get set up to hunt in Norrath, this is a Big Deal. Yes, it only applies to the small number of items that players want to buy, but now I can check every drop to see if there's a demand and if there is I can sell immediately and clear a bag slot  for more.

This wonderful change was a feature of the Rain of Fear expansion in 2012. You have to own that expansion to use it. I have it on my lapsed All Access account, which is the one I'm currently playing. I'm not sure if I have it on my current All Access one but if I don't then I'll be buying it (or rather I'll buy the latest expansion, which will give me all the previous ones) if I start playing a character over there.

I was particularly impressed to find I could use the function even though the account I was on isn't subbed. I already knew you could search the Bazaar remotely but I thought that was a perk of All Access. According to Almar "you can open the Bazaar tab anywhere in the world and buy items from anywhere in the world (Ownership of the Rain of Fear (RoF) expansion required). The same goes for using /barter. You can sell items immediately after picking them up from a monster and have the plat instantly placed in your inventory after you sell the wares!"

I often used to check the Bazaar remotely when I was playing my Magician, back when hers was the subbed account, but my memory was that, when I tried after my subscription lapsed, the option was no longer available. Well, either my memory is faulty (likely!) or things have changed. (Or, it just occurs to me, I am confusing the usage of EQ's Bazaar with that of EQ2's Broker...the "too many Norraths" problem). Anyway, I just tested it and a F2P (Silver) account can check the Bazaar remotely.

Not only that, there's a "BUY" button for /bazaar just like there's a "SELL" button for /barter. I found a cheap pair of gloves I needed so I could test it. I pressed BUY and another window popped up. Apparently you can pay via some kind of ticket to have the item delivered straight to your bags or pay a platinum fee to have it sent to a "Parcels" NPC.

Since I didn't have any of the tickets and didn't know where or how to get them, and since I was in Plane of Knoweledge, home of every service known to Norrath, I chose "Parcels". Then  I popped "Find" (another essential quality of life feature) and followed the glowing trail to the Small Bank, where a gnome by the name of Caden Zharik had my gloves ready and waiting.

Clearly I need to read up on all this. I feel like I've been playing with blinkers on these past few years. How much more is there that I don't know? How many awkward, time-consuming aspects - "that's just how it is in EQ" - are really artefacts of my own ignorance?

I don't know but I suspect a lot. It really is no wonder new players find it heavy going. You could say it should be better explained but it would need a manual the size of an encyclopedia and who would read it? Keep adding content for two decades and that's just what happens, I guess.

Always something new to learn, though. I'd call that a feature all of its own.

Opportunities : EverQuest

Back when I used to make a character on every new EQ server that rolled by, I prided myself on being able to bootstrap from abject poverty to very comfortable thank-you in a handful of sessions. That seems like a very long time ago.

These days most servers have some form of hyper-inflation and all the real market movers count their wealth in Kronos not platinum. And anyway, I have no idea what's valuable any more. I used to make a lot of money going through the bins buying back potentially valuable items players had sold to vendors but I can't parse vendor stock for value at a glance the way I once could.

Still, there are ways. A good one is to take a look at what players are selling in The Bazaar - particularly what they're buying on the /barter system. You can set your character up as either a seller or a buyer. Almar has a guide on how to do it but you need to be an All Access member (aka subscriber), which, on the account I'm using on Vox, I am not.

Doesn't matter. I don't want to set up a vendor. I just want to know what to look out for so I can sell it to whoever's buying.

I got fed up of sitting and medding so I claimed the mount from the Echoes of Faydwer expansion. It's supposed to be a warg but it looks more like a pig with a lion's head. A green pig.

Only a fraction of the number of players buy compared to those who sell but you don't need many. Today on Vox there were 68 vendors and 13 buyers, which is actually a higher ratio than I'm used to. I spent a while perusing the buy offers. Mostly crafting materials. Always is. A few people looking to buy Defiant armor on the cheap. The odd specialist request for weird rares.

It's interesting how many things have held value and interest. I was making coin selling odd gems like Taaffeite and Harmonagate a decade ago and they're still in demand today. Even older than that, apparently you can still make money farming Iron Oxide and Permafrost Crystals, something I remember doing even before the Bazaar existed, when you had to do your trades in the EC Tunnel or by the Freeport bank.

Nothing I had on me was on the list and a trawl round the vendors in The Bazaar and Plane of knowledge only turned up a couple of pieces of Crude Silk and a Crude Animal Pelt. Still, that got me forty plat, which was a start.

A start that needed a stop. I'm very wary of getting sucked into the "must check all the vendors" cycle again. Mrs Bhagpuss and I fell so far down that rabbit hole at one time we had to quit EQ and play something else for a while. I try to keep my vendor diving casual nowadays.

You know the boats are running again, Sedina? Wait, never mind - just port me!

The player economy may have moved on but there were always a few classic ways to make money for spells and gear at low levels that didn't involve trading. One of my favorites was hunting Willowisps for their Greater Lightstones.

GLSs are extremely good low-level loot in their own right. They sell to vendors for around four platinum per. Regular Lightstones sell for just under a plat. Rather than selling them straight away, though, it always used to be worth hoofing down to the Gypsy Camp in North Karana, where Mrysla would swap you a GLS for a Concordance of Research and then buy the Concordance back for twice what she'd pay for the Greater Lightstone. It's a wonder she wasn't kicked out of the Gypsy Union years ago.

I remembered all that without having to look it up. I also remembered where wisps can best be hunted and that Level 12 pets can "hit magic" - essential since wisps are immune to normal attacks. I hunted wisps in Qeynos Hills until I needed to sell, then I went through Qeynos to the docks to take the boat to Erud's Crossing.

There was no need to wait for the boat, alhtough I later saw it pass the docks. The Translocator Gnomes, who were added as a "temporary" fix, way back when the boats first began to misbehave in the early 2000s, are still on the job, porting on request. I zapped over to the rock we used to call "Wisp Island" because it was where we'd go there to farm them.

It looks a lot nicer in daylight. Also fewer zombies then.

After a while I had as many GLSs as I could carry. I gated to PoK and went to The Nexus to catch the portal to the wizard spire. It fires up every fifteen mniutes. I checked and even in 2018 that seems to be the fastest way to get there.

I'm noticing a lot of small quality of life improvements that would have made things so much easier back in the old Luclin/PoP days. The Nexus Scions now have descriptive names that tell you where they're going to send you and all the spell vendors tell you which level spells they sell. There's loads of stuff like that. Or maybe there always was and it's just my settings that have changed. I do tend to play with all information switched off but on Vox I'm mostly still using the defaults.

One thing that has definitely changed and not for the better is Mrysla. Someone has finally clued her in to the reverse-scam she was running on herself. She now pays exactly the same for the Concordance as she does for Greater Lightstones. She may not be making anything but at least she won't go bankrupt.

I googled this to see if I could see when it changed but every reference went back a few years at least and all claimed she paid double for the Concordance.  Well, she doesn't, so it's probably not worth lugging the things all the way to the back of beyond any more. You do get some decent xp for handing them in so it might be worth the trek if you're leveling. Otherwise I'd just sell your lightstones where you get the best price and save yourself the trip.

What do you mean it's the same price?! I came all this way for nothing???

It's a dangerous journey, too, at low level. I had to avoid griffons and Hill Giants, some of which path right through the gypsy camp. Classic EverQuest. Luckily as a necro I have Gather Shadows, which, in another quality of life upgrade, no longer fades randomly but always runs its full duration.

Or maybe it doesn't. I don't know. I've used it a load and it hasn't dropped. Maybe I'm just lucky. It's very difficult these days to find accurate, current info on EQ because the signal is lost in all the noise from the game's long history and, especially, from P99.

Then, EQ was always a mystery. For years nothing was documented and now even when it is I don't always believe it. For example, we always used to believe that some wisps were massively tougher than others but we never knew which or why.

I noticed today that I could clearly see the buffs on  wisps in North Karana and some had none at all while others had Heroism and Symbol of Marsan. These are  Level 52 and 54 Cleric spells respectively.

There was one other person in the zone other than me - a Druid - and in any event as far as I know you haven't been able to buff random mobs in EQ for about fifteen years. You can charm them then buff them then break charm and I think they still keep the buffs, although I'm not even 100% sure of that, but Clerics can't charm and it seems beyond reason to imagine a Cleric/Chanter duo roaming the Karanas, charming and buffing wisps and then releasing them just on the off-chance some passing low level might get griefed. I mean, I know that was common practice back in the day but back in the day there were people in these zones...

I call Shenanigans.

Maybe there's some NPC that buffs them. I know I got charmed by one of the Gypsies in North Karana once, who then set me on some unfortunate player. NPCs have minds of their own in Norrath - or they used to. I thought it was all meant have been toned down but maybe not.

And...this is why I love Norrath. Weird stuff happens all the time. You never really know what's going on and even when you think you do, often as not you're just fooling yourself. .

Level fifty cleric buffs or not, I managed to kill my wisps. I have a pocket cleric of my own, thankfully, or I would have had to run them across the bridge to East karana. Mercenaries and Defiant armor make the low/mid level game a playground not a purgatory these days.

Back in Plane of Knowledge I spent my GLS money on a full set of Crude Defiant Jewellery from the handy vendor near the Soulbinder. Like a million other good things in EQ, you have to know it's there. No-one's going to tell you. Except, I just did...

I'm about half-dressed in Defiant now and at Level 14 I have six more levels before I need to think about upgrading. At the rate I'm going that should be sometime on Thursday or Frday.

Whether I'll carry on after that, who can say. I'm having a heap of fun right now, though, so maybe I will. If I do, I'm going to need to come up with a better money-making scheme than selling Greater Lightstones for union minimum.  Any ideas?

What's Old Is New Again : EverQuest

As a rule, I don't find all that much to complain about in EverQuest these days. Over the long years since I began playing, back at the death of the 20th Century, many of the wrinkles have been smoothed out and I like that. As much as I enjoyed the "up hill both ways in the snow" gameplay of 1999, I prefer the modern version. Coming back yet again after another break of six months or so I noticed a couple of improvements that had slipped under my radar.

Time Stands Still In Plane of Knowledge

Ever since the Guild Lobby was introduced with the Dragons of Norrath expansion in 2005 players have gathered there by the score because that's where time stands still.  If you go afk in the Lobby all your buffs will be in exactly that the same state of decay when you return as when you left. What's more, if you stand around running your idling animations for long enough you can guarantee some generous max-levels will spray MGBs all over you - and that's a good thing.

MGB means Mass Group Buffs - and retinal scarring.

The huge conglomeration of players, pets and mercs huddled in the center of the Lobby has long been known as the Lag pile for obvious reasons. As this thread suggests its not seen as a social activity by everyone but I've always appreciated it.

One thing I hadn't noticed until yesterday is that the temporal stasis effect now extends to both Plane of Knowledge and The Bazaar. I don't know when this change happened but it's incredibly convenient and most welcome. Being able to wander around PoK and go shopping in The Bazaar without having to worry about losing buffage or needing to swap to a "shopping" character is wonderful.

Tunes For A New Moon 

Zoning into The Bazaar yesterday afternoon I was immediately aware of something whose wonderfulness was somewhat less certain: the new zone music. It was so striking that I tabbed out right away to google what had happened.

It seems that when the Shadows of Luclin expansion was released SOE simply forgot to include most of the music files. I know, right? You'd think someone might have noticed but I must have played for many hundreds of hours all across Norrath's ill-fated moon and I can't honestly say it ever occured to me to wonder why there was no orchestra accompanying my adventures.

You'd think she'd notice the lack of music with ears like that...

Dev Dzarn explains on the forums

Previously unreleased music for every Shadows of Luclin zone was recently unearthed from a dangerous trek through the studio archives. These musical pieces will now play when adventuring on Norrath's most cat-filled Moon.

So far I've only heard the music in The Bazaar, which the OP of the thread describes as "elevator music". That's a tad harsh but it certainly is on the jazz-lite end of the musical spectrum. I think whoever composed it might have been taking the "shopping mall" aspect of the zone somewhat too much to heart.

I look forward to exploring the new lunar musical assets at some future date. Right now I have a much more important discovery to unpick.

Gateway to adventure.

Get 'Em While They're Hot Zones

In another unexpected and very welcome evolution for this venerable game, DBG have revamped the way Hot Zones work. This happened back in April but news about EQ is hard to come by when you're not actively playing and I missed it.

It would have been sufficient news in itself to get me to log in again had I known but instead it came as a very pleasant surprise when I spoke to Franklin Teek a few days ago. I took his daily tasks for Levels 75, 80 and 85 and for the first time in many years he didn't ask me to go to Bloodfields or Oceangreen Hills.

Being a little out of practice I decided to start at the easy end with the Level 75 task. That turned out to be a great choice. Not only is Jewel of Atiiki a lovely zone to spend time in - light, airy, relaxing - but the mobs there are perfectly spaced for soloing and exactly the right difficulty level. What's more, with the Hot Zone bonus the xp ticks over nicely, at least by the standards of the late 80s.

I do like a nice, wide corridor.

 
 The Hollow World

Of my few complaints concerning latter-day EQ, near the top of the list would be overly dark zones. I am just about fed up of hunting in gloomy, overcast areas where it always rains and everything is green and brown. My favorite memories of Norrath are of the bright blue waters and glowing yellow sands of Oasis and the Deserts of Ro or the wide open plains and endless skies of the Karanas, not the murky hollows of Hills of Shade.

It was with surprise and delight, then, that I arrived in one of the many zones I've never before visited, Jewel of Atiiki, to find myself in an analog of ancient Egypt. Pyramids, sphinxes, efreeti, palm trees and...gorillas?

The zone is part of The Buried Sea expansion, which is one I have dabbled in before but never fully explored. I had no idea it went from Pirates to Pharaohs. I spent a couple of very happy hours there exploring the pyramids before getting down to the job in hand - finding and killing my five gorillas.

Now that is indoors, I'll  grant you.

Ironically, given the bright sunlight and clear skies, the entire expansion takes place deep underground. It's magic, I expect, although it must be mostly illusion, because although it might look like the wide open spaces down there, apparently it still counts as indoors and you can't ride mounts "indoors".

It meant I couldn't use the new mount I got from opening Legends of Norrath packs, which in turn meant I occasionally needed to take an old school sit and med break. Never mind. That's a small price to pay for being able to see what I'm doing for once.

Onwards And Upwards

With this great new hunting ground I'm confident of reaching level 90 at last. I made over 10% of level 89 yesterday, which feels as good as finishing a full level in most other MMOs. Where to go after that I'm not sure but I expect Franklin Teek will tell me.

Given the age of the game it's very encouraging indeed to see just how much work is still being done on it. Those Hot Zones had languished under SOE for so long that most people probably thought they'd never change again. Of course, most of the commenters in the thread seem to wish they hadn't changed even now, but that's EQ players for you.

Look at me, Ma! Top of the pyramid!

New Blood, Old Blood

There's change afoot out of the game, too. The most prominently reported of the recent bout of hires at DBG was the recruitment of Cryptic's Jack Emmet to be CEO of Daybreak's Austin studio, responsible for DCUO. Of more interest to me was the re-hiring of Ngreth, husband of EQ2Traders' Niami Denmother and longtime tradeskill dev for EverQuest.

For once the forum response was almost entirely enthusiastic. Ngreth, like Domino over at EQ2, has long had the respect of the players, crafters and adventurers alike. As I was pondering yesterday, Columbus Nova's plans are hard to fathom but the signs and portents continue to read very favorably from where I'm looking at them.

So, I'm back in EverQuest for yet another run. I will get my Mage to 90, which will allow her to upgrade the gear she got as part of the level 85 boost, all of which she is still wearing. How much further I can take her, solo, I'm not sure. The level cap now stands at 105. With the added incentive of some attractive new maps to explore I just might be able to make a dent in that before it recedes even further out of reach.

As always it will be fun trying.

Are We Nearly There Yet? : Everquest

I had a mind to photograph some rats. I say photograph. As far as I know, the gnomes of Norrath have yet to invent the camera. Insufficient inherent explosive potential, I imagine. Gnomish technology notwithstanding however, I set out to take some screenshots.

The rats in question live in Dragon Necropolis. Dragon Necropolis is in Western Wastes, a part of Velious as yet unrediscovered in EQ2 and probably undiscovered by many current players of the elder game because Western Wastes is a long way from anywhere. No wizard or druid can open a portal there, the Plane of Knowledge has no Book for it and the Guild Hall vendor has no Western Wastes Focus Stone in stock.

If you want to go to Western Wastes, the nearest you can get in one move is Cobalt Scar. A druid or a wizard can port there, but my highest level of either is a level 60 druid and while she has hunted in Western Wastes I deemed her a tad fragile for photographic journalism in underground tunnels infested by rats that stab first and ask questions never, so I logged in my level 84 Beastlord. Who turned out to be in Dragonscale Hills.

Wait here Wizard, this won't take long...

An hour and a half later I hit the hot-key for Throne of Heroes, the veteran reward that allows non-gating classes to click their heels like Dorothy as casters have been doing since 1999. Had I photographed any rats? I had not. I didn't have my stop-watch out but in rough numbers it had taken me about forty-five minutes to run all the way from Dragonscale Hills to Siren's Grotto and about as long again trying to get from one side of the Grotto to the other. Unsuccessfully.

All of which entertainment got me to thinking about Everquest going Free To Play. I'm very happy about that even though I have Station Access and can already play Everquest whenever the mood takes me. I love the idea of new people flooding (alright, trickling) back into the lower-level zones and bringing them to life. I particularly relish the thought of Plane of Knowledge filling up with chattering, bustling hordes of players and pets, flapping and clumping and blocking the bank doorway so I can't get in, just like the good old days.

Negotiations with the Chetari run into difficulties

But you forget just how big Everquest is. According to Wikipedia Everquest currently has 375 zones,a suspiciously round and unbelievably huge number. Three hundred and seventy five zones, of which Western Wastes is by no means the furthest-flung or hardest to reach. It may not be like the old days, when a cross-country trip from Qeynos to Freeport demanded research, preparation and a full play session (two if you died halfway and couldn't get a rez). Still, simply getting from one place to another in Everquest is going to require a great deal more time, attention and knowledge than the modern MMO player is accustomed to bring.

I knew exactly how to get to Western Wastes. I've been there many times. I have maps. To refresh my memory I even had the Zam page up. I was going there with a character to whom nothing posed a threat. And I still gave up in frustration after the umpteenth failure to find the top of the waterfall in Siren's Grotto. It was late and I knew I could log in Mrs Bhagpuss's wizard in the morning, port my Beastlord to Cobalt Scar and then Evac across Siren's Grotto as I should have done in the first place. As indeed I did do and have the photographs of rats to prove.

There's a Plane of Pork? Who knew?

It's going to be very interesting indeed to see how Everquest fares as a Free To Play title. The sheer volume of content is far beyond overwhelming. The systems to be learned are so convoluted and arcane after thirteen years of accretive expansion that even the developers barely understand some of them. Just getting from one place to another still offers more adventure than most MMOs offer in a full dungeon-run. Yet the game was always very easy to get into at the low levels and famously addictive. An awful lot of incomers are going to bounce right off the dark star density but some will inevitably stick, caught in Norrath's inexorable gravity well.

And welcome as the new blood will be, Everquest is hardly languishing. After thirteen years the game still has sixteen servers up and running. As I write this, deep in the night on the U.S. server where my Beastlord lives, there are too many players to count in the Guild Lobby and in the Bazaar, where more than 180 traders stand idling. Not everyone's hanging around afk in the Lobby and Bazaar either. Many more can be seen out in hunting zones, especially at the highest levels. I'd bet that a lot of much younger MMOs would be delighted to have a population like that during off-off-peak hours after a year or two, let alone a decade and a half.