Expansions, Pandas, Events... It's All Happening In EQII

So, we know the name of the next EverQuest II expansion at last. It's Renewal of Ro. Jenn Chan slipped it in at the end of her latest Producer's Letter.  

Darkpaw seems to be developing some kind of slow release, drip feed for expansion news, a technique I find rather effective. There's just enough new information each time to keep the appetite piqued and it takes several bites out of the news cycle. Like most things Daybreak is doing these days, it feels like a solid, competent effort from a significantly more focused marketing department than we've been used to seeing in the past.

There's still very little detail on the exact setting or storyline for EQII's nineteenth expansion, other than the hint hidden in the very last sentence - if you can call something hidden that's been both bolded and italicized. "Get ready to Tack on your best gear and establish yourself as one of the greatest of spelunkers in hiztory". Jenn does love her puns.

You could engrave everything I know about Takish Hiz on the head of a pin - if you were a gnome with one of those sets of magnifying goggles they all seem to wear. I have a passable grounding in Norrathian lore, myth and history but the first I ever remember hearing of the legendary home of the elves was in 2003's Lost Dungeons of Norrath, the sixth (And in my opinion one of the best.) expansions to the original EverQuest.

Takish Hiz was one of the LDoN dungeons, where I spent a great deal of time in the six months before the next bi-annual expansion suddenly made getting groups to go there all but impossible. I remember it clearly as a complex of marble halls and corridors entombed beneath the desert sands. Of the sylvan forests so dear to the elves who once ruled Norrath during the eponymous Takish Age, there was no sign at all.

How long Takish Hiz has lain beneath the sands I'm not sure but by the time Renewal of Ro drops it has to have been a millennium at least. EQII is set five hundred years after EverQuest. EverQuest Online Adventures, the iteration of Norrath created for Playstation 2, was set five hundred years before. Much to my regret, I never played EQOA but from the wiki I can see that Takish Hiz was a zone in that game and the pictures and descriptions clearly show it long abandoned, the desert already in the process of reclaiming a land left empty by the vanished forests of the elves.

I have to say I am very interested by the choice of location for this year's expansion. While I do like to see and explore brand new places, I feel one of EQII's strongest cards is its connection with EQ . Every time we're offered the chance to re-visit old haunts there's a powerful emotional charge freighted in that frisson of familiarity, combined with curiosity. 

It's subtly different from pure nostalgia, more like the odd, disconcerting sensation that comes from seeing how things have changed when you go back to a place you once knew well, after a long time away. I find that feeling compelling in the real world and it's no less energizing in virtuality.

Added to that, the EQII expansion which the new one references, Prophecy of Ro, was very good indeed. It had a truly huge amount of content, much of which I've completed more than once, and it had a strong, consistent theme that held everything together. I had many good times there and still do, whenever I go back.

The last expansion, Visions of Vetrovia, was lots of fun. It ticked all the expected boxes for an EQII expansion and I got several months of quality entertainment from it but perhaps the only thing I felt a little unsatisfied by was the supposed connection with the troubled EQ expansions Gates of Discord and Omens of War. I was looking forward to revisiting some of those locations - Wall of Slaughter maybe, Natimbi certainly, but in the end there was barely a namecheck for any of the places I knew.

Takish Hiz is much more of an unknown quantity. It was already lost in the mists of history the first time around. The Desert of Ro, on the other hand, has already had its day in the sun in PoR. I'm very curious to know just what the balance between new, old and new-old will be this time around.

Before the expansion arrives I probably need to do some work on whichever characters I intend to take through it first. I haven't been neglecting the game entirely but these last few months my activity there has tailed off a lot. I'm substantially further behind than I have been for a couple of years.

One way I've been able to benchmark is by the new gear available from 2022's Panda, Panda, Panda! event, which was patched into the game earlier this week. The event itself was always on the schedule, but it hadn't been entirely clear whether there would be a new set of quests this time.

There will. Nine weeks of quests, just like usual. This year they take the format of Creature Catalogs, a very smart way of reducing the workload for the team, while still giving players a similar experience to previous years.

This morning I did the first, a series of identifications around Kylong Plains in Kunark. With instant travel, flight and a surprisingly accurate memory for the exact locations of all the creatures needed, the whole thing took me about five minutes. If you did it old school and weren't familiar with the area I'd guess it might take fifteen or twenty.

Either way, it's a very good return on time invested. The first tier of rewards includes weapons which, at 315 resolve, will be upgrades for all but one of my characters. Browsing through the very large selection of gear, augments and sundry items available from the full sequence of nine quests, I can see that I'll need to pick up most of what's on offer, even for my best-equipped character.

Last year, for the first time, most of the Panda gear wasn't really an upgrade for the character I was planning on taking into Visions of Vetorvia so it shows how much I've let things slip. Of course, these days, the panda gear itself tends to be made obsolete by the hand-outs from the box on the floor next to the first questgiver in a new expansion, so it's a moot point whether I really need to take this short-term, interim upgrade. Since I'm going to be doing the quests for the fun of it anyway, it would be crazy not to pick up the rewards.

There's also a huge number of housing items to be had, all of which you'll be able to see at EQ2Traders as the event progresses. Niami Denmother also always has the best walkthroughs for the panda quests, should you need any handholding.

As well as the pandas there's also the other "get you ready for the expansion" event that always runs alongside it: Gear Up, Level Up. It comes in three phases and this time its available on all servers (Emphasized as "yes, all servers".

The schedule, should you need it, is as follows:

• September 27 – October 10 = Double Loot
• October 11 – October 17 = Mount Training Drops
• October 18 – October 24 = Spell Research Drops

I don't usually bother with Gear Up, Level Up but I might this year. Spell research boosts are always the most souhgt-after but to take full advantage I really need to get on and make all those Expert spells I've been avoiding.

Mount training boosts I already have in abundance, thanks to Overseer, but unusually, there's still content I haven't finished in the last expansion. Those double drops from instance bosses might have some things I want, even if I don't techically need them at this stage.

Either way, it's great to have options. Now all I have to do is find some time to excercise them.

Here Come The Pandas

It was more than four years ago that the first Days of Summer event arrived in EverQuest II. As I said back then, "It arrived without much of a fanfare" but the seemingly fluffy, inconsequential little quest series quickly became one of the cornerstones of the EQII year.  

There's a very simple explanation for that: the rewards are off the scale compared to any other event or questline anywhere close to being as accessible or easy to complete. All you have to do to get started is take a portal to a 100% guaranteed safe zone, chat to a panda and find out what you have to go collect or look at this week. 

Then you use the Fast Travel map or the spires or the bells to go to the relevant zone and fly to the right part of the map using the description in the quest. It usually includes the name of a point of interest which you can see on the map, assuming you're using the EQ2 Maps add-on, which virtually all regular players would be. Once there, you wander around looking for whatever it is you need to click on, which will almost always be glowing or sparkling or obvious in some way.

Most of the quests ask you to do that three times, sometimes in the same zone, sometimes in different zones. If you were having any difficulty at all EQ2 Traders always has the exact location in a walkthrough, including the locs, which you can copy and paste into the game to get a flashing map marker and a glowing trail to lead you right there.

Panda quests are about as foolproof as it's possible to make them. There's a new one each week for the duration of the event, which is always nine weeks long. In this case the nine weeks started yesterday and run until 23rd November. 

All the quests remain in game permanently so there's no rush. You could do like I do with TV shows if you want and wait 'til they're all available before bingeing on the lot. Indeed, very much like a long-running TV show, if you're just discovering it now you'll need to go back to the beginning and start there. You can't do the various annual quest sets out of sequence but you only have to do them once per account for all your character to reap the rewards.

When I say "reap" I really mean "shop." Every reward from the past four years plus this year's lot are on an undersized panda called Pas Yu, also known, appropriately, as "Carrier of Things".

Five years of assorted rewards can be hell to sift through so to save time I'll mention that this year's all have "Hua" somewhere in the name. Just search for that.

As I said, these are really very good rewards indeed. Not for raiders or Heroic dungeoneers perhaps, although there are all kinds of non-progression goodies like house items, prestige houses and cosmetics sprinkled in there, but for solo players and casuals all of all stripes. 

The question isn't why is the Hua such a slight upgrade, it's why am I wearing such low Resolve pieces in the first place?

 

The armor and weapons, of which there are all types for all classes, are only small improvements over the free stuff from last year's expansion and they'll almost certainly be rendered redundant by the freebies in the starter box from Visons of Vetrovia, but that's the nature of a gear progression based game. For now, they'll do a job for anyone who needs to play catch-up.

I spent some time last night looking through them and comparing stats. Even on my Berserker, my best-equipped character, there are a few Hua pieces I'll use, although mostly that's because I fell off the EQII wagon back at the start of the summer and stopped working on him before he was done.

As for my half-dozen other max levels, all of them could benefit hugely from the Hua gear. On the other hand, they aren't likely to get much playtime before the next expansion drops, so whether it's worth the bother is another question. I could probably stand to wait until then before taking the whole crew to wherever the expansion begins and fitting them all out in whatever's in the now-inevitable box on the floor next to the first questgiver.

This, however, is something I very much need.
I can't craft green Adorns and I've had
absolutely no luck getting any as drops for years.

Then there are the Adornments. Adornments are extremely important in EQII. Without the right sets you are going to have a very rough time of it in any at-level content. My Berserker is also a maxed-out Adorner with nearly all the recipes but not all Adorns are craftable and anyway it's a lot of time, effort and expense to make adorns for everyone. I'd rather use the ones the pandas hand out wherever possible.

The drawback is taking them in and out. It's easy to do but it takes a while, de-adorning and re-adorning an entire suit of armor plus accessories. I'm not sure I want to go through all that effort over the next nine weeks only to find that the VoV starter gear comes with better Adorns already fitted.

I'm thinking since I'm unlikely to be playing anyone other than my Berserker and my Necro before then I might just kit those two out and leave the rest until the expansion arrives. Either way, it's hardly a pressing issue right now.

There'd be no question of my not doing the panda quests even if I didn't want any of the gear. They're some of the most enjoyable, relaxing quests in the game. I'd do them if the only rewards were a smile and a thank-you from the pandas themselves. 

There are other reasons, too. This year, like every year, there are some very appealing non-combat choices. I have my eye on the captain's hat and the 44-slot backpack that displays as a papoose with two panda cubs. There's also an ant ground mount I want. I don't think we've ever been able to ride ants before.

I like the way the whole thing has morphed from a Summer seasonal to a quasi-holiday centered on panda culture. Moving it into the autumn and renaming it Panda Panda Panda seems like a good move. I'd be up for it turning into a full holiday one day. We could do with something on the calendar between Tinkerfest and Nights of Dead.

That's about all I have to say. It's a simple event but a very good one. It shows you don't have to over-elaborate to give people something they'll both look forward to and appreciate. All you need to do is make it fun and worthwhile.

You wouldn't think it was that hard, would you?

It's All Panda Panda Now : EverQuest II

As you can see from the screenshot above, Yun Zi the panda is a popular chap. It's not so much his friendly, affable personality or his open, childlike enthusiasm. It's more that he gives you stuff.

It's pretty good stuff, too. For any casual player who hasn't been putting in the hours since last year, the gear Yun Zi hands out is likely to offer some serious upgrades. And even if you have made the effort, the fact that he's happy to equip as many of your characters as you care to bring makes doing his simple runaround quests an annual ritual no-one wants to skip.

He's always surrounded by players, digging through his stockpile, but he's starting to develop a bit of an entourage of his own as well. When he first appeared, back in 2017, he was on his own but when we saw him again the following year he'd acquired an assistant, Pas Yu, to handle the merchandise. 

This year Yun Zi isn't giving out quests at all. He seems to have sated his thirst for third-party adventure. He's basking in the reflected glory of being the only panda who knows anything at all about the world outside the secluded village where he and his friends and family live.

He's become such a local celebrity, off the back of the tales we've told him, that a panda by the name of Mei Lan has been tasked with arranging a celebratory feast in his honor. Naturally, since Yun Zi is such a well-travelled explorer, albeit vicariously, she wants the menu to reflect all the myriad places he's visited. Or had us visit, I should say.

It's a delightful conceit. I was wondering how long Yun Zi could hold up the narrative of the naive rich kid blowing the family fortune on a personal obsession. The story was starting to get a little threadbare but this refreshes it perfectly.

This year, instead of zipping around the world each week in search of stories to tell, we're tasked with finding ingredients for Mei Lan to turn into amazing "local" dishes. The first excursion takes us to Antonica, where we need to find the makings for Coldwind Clam Chowder.

I know Antonica pretty well. A quick glance at the list told me just about everything I needed to know. 

I figured the giant Coldwind clams would be on the wide, desolate beach just down from Archer's Wood, where Mrs. Bhagpuss, myself and a friend spent hours hunting crabs for spell drops in beta and after launch. And yes, that's where they were.

I went for the old oak potatoes next, thinking they might be in the woods above the beach. Silly of me. Yes, those are oak trees, but who ever heard of potatoes growing in a forest? They are, of course, in the tilled fields just outside gates of Qeynos, where the bugs are so huge you can make a good living killing them for the farmers nearby.

The last ingredient on Mei Lan's list was wild Coven onions. There's only one coven I know in Antonica and that's along the riverside between the bridge and the aquaduct. 

The onions were there, sure enough, but so was something I wasn't expecting at all. As I said, I reckon to know Antonica pretty well. I must have spent hundreds of hours there over a decade and a half. I know I don't have the greatest memory but I think I'd have remembered if there'd been molehills the size of hobbit houses all over the fields next to the stream.

I stopped and looked at those for quite a while before I noticed something else I swear wasn't there before. A farmhouse, in the typical Antonican log cabin style, up a path in the low hills looking down on the river.

I don't know. There are a lot of farmhouses like that in Antonica. Maybe it was always there? I'd believe that before I believed those molehills were, that's for sure. 

The farmer was standing by his porch, gazing out at his fields. I thought maybe he'd have something to say about the infestation so I went to talk to him. He was happy enough to tell me how he felt about his lot in life but on the topic of the giant molehills peppering his land he remained strangely silent.

I filed it away as another of Norrath's mysteries. Must have been some event I missed. Forgotten, abandoned debris from those litters the lands from Qeynos to Freeport and far beyond. Everyone likes to organize events but no-one wants to clean up afterwards.

Back in Sundered Frontier I gave Mei Lan her makings and moved on to see what Pas Yu had new for us this year. I've been a lot more diligent than usual since the return to Luclin so I wasn't expecting much in the way of upgrades on my berserker, who's had first pick of all the goodies from instances and Overseer missions.

The items become available week by week as the questline continues but you can see everything from the start. There are some very nice adornments to be had, which is good because one area where I have been lax is in making top-notch white adorns. My berserker is a maxed-level Adorner and he has almost every recipe but the mats are a bit expensive. Also I kind of forgot.

I noted those for the future and carried on sorting through the new "Shadowed Excursion" gear. I followed my usual policy of checking the Resolve to see if anything was worth equipping. Resolve isn't specifically intended as a gear score but it acts as a very reliable benchmark. 

As I expected, there was nothing with resolve much higher than 170. My berserker isn't wearing anything lower than that and much of his gear is 175 or 180. Most of my roster have similar although I'm sure there must be a few 165s and even 160s lurking here and there.

I'd all but dismissed the idea of taking anything for the berserker when I happened to notice some of the rest of the stats. In EQII, as you mouse over gear, an automatic comparison with what you're wearing in that slot pops up. It seemed that although these new items had a lower Resolve rating, some - if not most - of the other stats were higher.

I spent a while doing a close compare on several slots and the conclusion was inescapable: the panda's gear was better than most of my berserker's, whatever the difference in resolve. What's more, the base stats on the Shadowed Excursion were often better than the enhanced stats on the gear I'd poured platinum and infusers into improving.

Even the rather nice 350 resolve, planar level six, two-hander the berserker had wasn't as good as the 340 resolve, planar level one Heavy Staff of the Shadowed Excursion that becomes available right after you complete the first of this year's quests. With the Two Handed Shadowed Excursion Rune: Power of the Planes that also opens up after the first quest installed, it was a serious upgrade. 

It looks as though I'll be swapping out almost everything for panda gear once more, after all. Maybe not the 180 resolve stuff. Definitely not the 200 resolve ethereal cloak. But most of it.

And then, quite possibly, that will get replaced with free stuff from the box beside the first questgiver in the new expansion. And that will get swapped out for the first set of quest rewards. Which will soon give way to drops from Overseer missions and instances.

You could be forgiven for wondering what the point of it all might be. It does seem a little self-defeating, all this built-in obsolescence. Only, having played a game for eight years where I haven't needed new gear for almost as long, I know which I prefer.

EQII's a funny old game, but I like it.

I just wish I know where those giant moles went.

Let's Go To The Moon (Like We Did Last Winter)

Right after I finished yesterday's post I found out EverQuest II had dropped a double-sized update, including some pre-expansion events and this year's somewhat inaccurately-named Days of Summer questline. That makes me very happy, for two reasons. First, new content. Yay! Second, something to post about. Yay!!

Last year the run-up to the expansion was spectacular but that was largely because it co-incided with the fifteenth anniversary celebrations. The two things were very cleverly intertwined.  

The expansion-related quests themselves were relatively low-key. Some collection and crafting for tradeskillers, some solo slaughter for adventurers. The real attraction was a sustained draconic assault on the wizard spires, which created huge crowds and a party atmosphere. There was a big tradeskill event, too, with the corpses of the defeated dragons providing the materials to build the giant statues that now stand proudly in Antonica and the Commonlands.

It was enormous fun and the desirability of the rewards kept people coming back all the way until the expansion launched. I spent many hours across a couple of months, leveling tradeskills and fighting dragons, to my great profit and satisfaction.

It would be a bit of an ask to expect Daybreak to repeat the whole extravaganza all over again, although I admit I was hoping they might. Based on what I saw last night, that's not going to happen but there is some solid, enjoyable content in the form of the by now traditional repeatable quests.

Like last year, the action begins in Teren's Grasp, the icebound mountain city high above Kylong Plains. I woke up my berserker and sent him there, via the spires, to grab whatever was going. 

There are five tradeskill quests, all of which I have and none of which I've done yet. Probably should have thought about that before I started the post, really. I don't imagine they take very long. Why don't I do one now and see how it goes? Talk among yourselves for a moment...

And just as well I did! That wasn't exactly what I was expecting. Oh, the gathering of the one specific quest material went as I'd imagined it would. Just run around Teren's Grasp and harvest from the many spinning crystal formations. 

No, the unusual part happens when you come to craft whatever item the quest requires, in my case a Box of Nails. The dwarf who gave me the quest said he wasn't picky about what materials I used, something confirmed in the quest description in my journal, so I was planning on using whatever ore I had the most of. 

I wasn't expecting the combine to decide at random which materials I was allowed to use and I certainly didn't imagine they'd all be rares! The recipe requires seven mats and you need to repeat the combine three times to complete the quest, making twenty-rares in total. And for that you get a measly two G.L.E.E.S.H. Marks, the new currency. (You don't need to know what the acronym stands for, trust me on that).

I know rares aren't what they once were and I can certainly farm a lot of them fast these days, but even so that seemed out of order, so I checked. God bless EQ2Crafters is all I can say.

Niami Denmother is recovering from some very major surgery (get well soon, Mum!) but Wilhelmina from the French crafting site EQ2Artisans has stepped in to keep us all informed. It seems that you can indeed use regular mats but the quest doesn't select them randomly at all. It picks the smallest stacks in your inventory. 

If, as I did, you go to your home and let the stupid AI loose on your materials depot, it brilliantly  manages to spot that all your smallest stacks are, inevitably, rares. Because of course they are. That's why we call them "rares"!

The solution is to pick out the materials you want to use and have those in your inventory and to do the combine somewhere other than the zone where you have your harvesting depots. Shame I didn't read that first, isn't it?

I'm not sure I'll bother going to all that trouble. Not when there's a nice, simple adventure quest that, once completed, lets you farm an infinite number of invading mobs, each of which has a fifty-fifty chance of dropping a mark.

That quest, by the way, is called "The Not So Nice Yet Accurate Prophecies of Beckah Stormsong", which has to be a hat-tip to Pratchett and Gaiman's "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch". As well as giving props to the masters, the quest also throws a little shade on the work we're all doing to facilitate the next phase of the recovery of Luclin. Let's hope Beckah isn't really as accurate in her prognostications as Agnes turned out to be.

Last but for my playstyle definitely not least comes a repeatable Overseer mission. It follows the familiar pattern we've come to expect from previous holiday and event chains. You speak to an NPC in Teren's Grasp to get the initial quest and then each subsequent mission gives you the next in the sequence. 

I'm on part five, I think. It's called Iksar Intent: Into The Essence. There's at least one more part after that. Not sure what you get but I'm betting on a title.

And that's about it. All of the above will be with us from now until the expansion launches which is... well, we have no idea yet. I don't believe we even know what it's called, do we? Unless it's "Haven Bound". But I think that's just the name of the pre-expansion event.

It's always like this. I rather like the vagueness. We'll find out soon enough, I'm sure.

I ran on so much there, I think I'll save what I have to say about the new Panda quests for tomorrow. I've done the first one and I do have a few observations on how that went.

Meanwhile, I think I'll go farm some marks. I do want those petamorph wands and who says no to free mounts?

Late Summer: EQII

What with all the excitement over WoW Classic these last few weeks it seems like an age since I logged into EverQuest II. I had a heap of things I wanted to do over there before the expansion arrives in... well, whenever it comes. It doesn't even have a name yet, let alone a release date.

The main thing I've let slip is the Days of Summer annual questline, also known as the panda quest after the NPC, Yun Zi, who sends you out exploring on his behalf. I did the first three as they appeared this year and then fell off the train. Logging in today I found I had four new ones to do, meaning it's been a full month since I last played. How time flies.

There are nine Days of Summer and we're currently on number seven. There's no real rush to do them because they don't expire when Summer ends. Still, I like to keep on top of things.

The fourth quest took me to Kunark, the fifth to Moors of Ykesha, the sixth to Velious and the current one, the seventh, to The Ethernere. I'd be exaggerating if I said it was a nostalgia trip. I've visited all these places many times this year alone.

I levelled a character through much of Kunark earlier in the year and I'm in and out of Moors every time I play. It's an extremely convenient one-stop shop for banking, brokerage, crafting and transport and until Daybreak added free instant map transport to the All Access membership perks it was my go-to spot for all of those things.

As for Velious, I was playing around with some old raids there just a few months back. It's been a while since I was last in The Ethernere though.

I found these four quests made for a fascinating little trip through the evolution of EQII graphics. Kunark looks very elderly now, all blocky textures and undefined details. Moors of Ykesha was never a visually appealing zone although it has endless hidden charms if you take the time to look for them.

Velious is the watershed. I place the turning point at the introduction of Cobalt Scar, the final zone that was added to Velious after launch. The earlier zones are some of the least visually attractive in the whole of EQII, all glaring, featureless white snow and glacial ice.

The lush pinewoods of Cobalt Scar.

Cobalt Scar is different altogether. The edge of a pine forest abuts a series of rocky beaches. There are scrubby grass-covered dunes, sheltered ravines lit by scattered winter sunlight and the colors range from deep woodland green to distant, misted blue.

It's a bit of a tone poem and it surprised the heck out of me when I first saw it. I had no idea the EQII engine was capable of such subtlety. From then onwards EQII's graphics took a great leap leap forward. Every new zone, each expansion since, has been sumptuous and rich to see.

Yun Zi's current obsession, The Ethernere, takes lushness to extremes. The Ethernere is one of the realms of the afterlife (a tricky proposition in Norrath at the best of times so I won't attempt to be more specific than that) and the artists pulled out all the stops to make it live up to the "ethereal" part of its name.

I don't visit it as often as I might and always forget just how gorgeous it is. When I came back to EQII after a significant break a few years ago and played through the two expansions set in the lands of the dead, Chains of Eternity and Tears of Veeshan, back to back, I found the relentless use of deep color washes and the dense foliage somewhat overwhelming. Now I love it.

Finding the souvenirs the panda wanted was easy enough. I used the invaluable guide at EQ2Traders to speed things up but really all the things you're looking for are right next to the locations given in the quest journal.

I did have one small issue in Cobalt Scar, when the statue I was looking for didn't want to show up. I suspect I glitched something by mistakenly going to the third location first. Each step has to be done in the order they appear in the journal. A quick relog soon fixed whatever it was and I was back on schedule.

All four weeks of quests took me about an hour to complete. It would have been quicker if I hadn't kept stopping to take screenshots. That was the easy part.

This is an easy one. It's clear that all the major stats on the "Bold Crusade" piece are direct upgrades. Not many of the comparisons were as simple to read as that.

I was more than another hour going through all the rewards available from Yun Zi's diminutive assistant. (All the new gear is named "Bold Crusade", making it easy to search for). EQII has an exemplary item comparison system, one of the best I've seen, and DBG have made a huge effort recently to simplify and consolidate stats but even so working out what's better than what requires some serious intellectual effort.

As a solo Berserker I run something of a split-level build. I use the offensive stance to maximize my damage output but I combine it with a focus on hit points and armor class for better survivability.

If I was to go full defensive, which would give me no fewer than three "stand straight back up after you died and carry on like nothing happened" get out of jail cards, the Berserker would be next to unkillable in solo content. I played that way for years but eventually I decided it was getting just too slow to kill stuff so I swapped and I haven't regretted it.

The problem - well, one of them - with assessing potential upgrades is working out what's going to happen to my health pool. The obvious contributors are Stamina and straight-up Health pluses but there are several other stats that affect your total number of hit points and none of them is obvious.

Even this extensive guide at EQ2 Library doesn't really explain how the stats interact. Fortunately panda gear is free and available in unlimited quantities for the asking so all I needed to do was take every available item and try it on.

With the aid of the absolutely essential unlimited adornment removal ability granted for completing Shattered Seas timeline from the Age of Malice expansion I was able to pop all my adornments off the old stuff and add them to the new. Then I reversed the process if it turned out the old was better after all.

In the event, even though quite a few of the new items seemed to me to be "worse" than what I was wearing, when they were equipped they all proved to be upgrades. Finally, I ran every new piece through a few hundred platinum's worth of Infusions. My Health went from around 65 million HPs to just under 72m and my Potency rose from 46k to 50k. There were similar increases for most of my other important stats, too, particularly Crit Bonus.

I was really surprised how much difference this year's panda gear made. I consider my Berserker to be decently geared for a solo character but this new baseline seems to be around 10% above where he was. Assuming that's the lowest possible gearing point for the upcoming expansion I'd recommend everyone not already in gear from last expansion's Heroic Dungeons or Raids to upgrade via the panda.

I'll be putting this gear onto all my max level characters. The Days of Summer quests are an absolute boon for anyone with lots of alts. It avoids having to repeat the previous expansion's content multiple times just to be ready to do the next one.

Still two weeks to go. That should replace the two biggest pieces, Chest and Legs, and also the Primary weapon, although there I do have something that's almost certainly better than anything Yun Zi has in his attic.

All of this has definitely put me in the mood to get back to EQII for some new adventures and another ten levels. Let's hope the pre-orders are coming soon.

News From Norrath: EverQuest, EQII

Since a significant portion of my search traffic comes from people looking up stuff about EverQuest and, particularly, EQII, I thought I'd throw this up quickly as a public service. Rather than rely on me, though, if anyone is playing or following EQ, I'd strongly recommend you bookmark The Everquest Show, or add it to your RSS feed. It's fast becoming the best source of news on EverQuest. It also covers EQII to an extent but for the moment I think I'm ahead of them there!

I can't claim any credit for finding The Everquest Show. Wilhelm did that. I just jumped on the train as soon as he told me about it. After a slow start it's really picking up speed. It's also in the blog roll to the right so all the new posts should appear at the top as they come out.

Holly "Windstalker" Longdale, EQ Franchise Producer, who I was bigging up the other day for Developer Appreciation Week, released two Producer's Letters today, one for each game. Both come with screenshots from the forthcoming expansions and The Everquest Show have some extra exclusive shots on top of that.

The EverQuest screens look amazing. Apparently the game now has "ice shaders" for the first time in twenty years and considering the extreme age of the engine the difference they make is stunning. The titles and theme of the expansions haven't been announced yet but it's entirely obvious that EQ players will be headed back to Velious.


This autumn is a much bigger deal for EQII players than their EQ cousins, who had their time in the sun back in the spring when the 20th Anniversary rolled around. EQII hits fifteen in November and there look to be plenty of celebrations coming down the pipe. EQ will also be supporting the anniversary, as EQII supported EQ's 20th earlier in the year.

Both games are getting a new progression server but they look to be radically different from the norm. In EverQuest "Players will start as Level 85 Heroic Characters with experience gain at the same rate as live servers. Content up to the House of Thule expansion will be available at launch with expansions unlocking every 2 – 3 months". House of Thule, the seventeenth expansion, raised the level cap to 90, which is where the current Heroic Character cap is set, so that makes sense.

The new EQII server sounds... odd: "Start as a Heroic Character with all content unlocked up to the Chaos Descending expansion and live server (normal) experience rates!". Chaos Descending is the current expansion so I can't quite see how that's going to work. It will be one expansion behind the Live game but otherwise functionally identical. Holly does say it will have "a unique rule-set" so I guess we'll just have to wait for the full details.

There's precious little information on offer about the expansion itself.  The Producer's Letter has a single teaser screenshot. It looks gorgeous but I have no idea where it might be. There's a Wizard Spire in the background and some creature I don't recognize at the front. It reminds me a little of Odus but really it could be anywhere.

One tidbit of hard data: EQ2's sixteenth expansion will release in December. Pretty much what I expected, not least because they won't want it to crash the anniversary celebrations.

Those include "new content for Heroes’ Festival" and "a completely new server-wide event on live servers". What's more, "the dragon-themed event will come with a reward that is a FIRST-EVER for EverQuest II players". That has really got me thinking. It almost sounds like a new addition to the game - a new gear slot or type of companion for example.

Before then we have the third year of Panda quests and the Karnage in Kael update, both of which drop on the 27th of this month. Intriguingly and possibly revealingly, Holly says the update "wasn’t originally planned for the year", which, given its release date, does suggest a counter-measure to WoW Classic. Personally I plan to play both. I resubbed today and so did Mrs Bhagpuss.

Other than that there will be Labor Day weekend bonuses and the now-traditional Gear-up, Level-up event in September as we slide downhill towards the expansion. Both games also have their current expansion at half price as of today.

Last and for me least, since there's no earthly or Norrathian chance I'll be attending, the team is still trying to assess the potential interest in a get-together. There's a poll/survey you can fill in on Google Docs if you think you might be interested.

And that's your lot - for now!

Hot Fun In The Summertime : EQ, EQII

I had another post planned for today but since I appear to have appointed myself unpaid P.R. rep for the EverQuest franchise that's going to have to wait. This is a time-critical announcement!

In recent years, Daybreak Games have been making a big deal out of summer with a long series of special events and offers in both EQ games. In EQII the Ethereal season is already under way but yesterday saw the start of the Summer Spectacular in both games.

Now, I'm guessing this is an event that's going to run across the whole season but that's speculation on my part because so far all we have is the schedule for the first week, July 1 to July 8. Let's bow to seniority and start with EverQuest.

The headline feature here is a 76% boost to all XP, faction and "rare drop rewards". Why 76%? July 4th maybe? For years and years bonus xp always came in round numbers, usually 100%. Of late it's been pegged back to 50%, which is generally not enough to get me to log in if I wasn't going to anyway, so 76% is an improvement.

The bonuses are for everyone, free to play and Members alike, "Members" being what DBG now prefer to call "Subscribers". Subscription is apparently a word we don't use in polite company any more.

While I might not log in for XP I will always make the effort for free stuff. Logging in this week will get you "two timely and celebratory familiars: the Metamorph Totem: Murikaglider and the Metamorph Totem: Cernerder'Eh Murkglider". They'll be autogranted to your Reward window as soon as you log in, provided you're a Member.

I confess I'm not exactly sure what they are. I didn't know EQ had familiars other than the ones Wizards use. Whatever they are, whatever they do, I want them! Also, Murkgliders look cool.

The Cernerder'Eh Murkglider in action.
Does Stargrace know about this?

That's about it for EQ other than some stuff returning to the cash shop. On to EQII, which gets the better deal from this event in my opinion.

For a start the bonuses, which again apply to everyone, go the full monty: "Status, Guild XP, and Currency rewards will be doubled throughout the event." Two of those are very significant features for anyone playing the game regularly and boosted XP is always attractive to anyone who fancies dropping back in for a session or three.

Members also benefit from double doubles on currency: "Members, your already-doubled membership currency bonus is doubled AGAIN during the event. This includes Ethereal currency!" With Ethereals always being a major draw, that's going to be popular.

But what about the free stuff? Don't worry, it's coming, and there's more than you might think.

The official announcement talks about a free mount, available via the DBG in-game store: "Log in and visit the Marketplace for a very special (and free!) Scorched Sky Carpet Mount. This will only be available during the event. Members only".

Even though I only saw the press release late last night, the lure of a free mount was enough to make me log in immediately. It's ironic, given that I once left the Live game to play on the much quieter Test Server for five years almost purely because the introduction of flying carpets annoyed me so much, but now I love them.

This is a particularly impressive model, too, with lanterns hanging from all four corners. The way they swing as the carpet corners is entrancing. It's a pity my Berserker's cloak clips straight through the carpet but you can't have everything.

Another thing that's not made clear, either in the announcement or in game, is whether the carpet applies once per account or once per character. I rather wanted it for my Shadowknight on the Antonia Bayle server but not at the expense of my Berserker on Skyfire, who has to have All The Things, so I asked in general chat.

EQII players can be snarky but they just love to answer questions. I got an immediate response confirming the good news: the carpet is per character.

EQII also gets a cash shop deal that doesn't  apply to EQ, which seems odd. All EQII players, F2P included, get 20% off "most Marketplace items". Members get their regular 10% discount on top, making it a great time to pick up anything you've been on the fence over as well as restocking those consumables. Can't have too many tracking scrolls.

All of that seems pretty sweet to me. Let's hope it's just the start of a long, hot Summer of free stuff and special offers. Also, Gninja confirmed in a reply to a thread on Raiding (for some reason) that the Panda will be back with his amazing pre-expansion upgrades for a third year in what will no doubt be Days of Summer 3.

Don't you just love sequels?

Long Summer Days : EQ2

Just a short note to give any EQ2 players a heads-up that the excellent and essential Days of Summer event is back. Since I've been neglecting EQ2 in favor of Bless, I would have missed it myself, had it not been for a line in Kaozz's recent post.

EQTraders had already flagged the event when it began on August 21st - Naimi Denmother makes a point of drawing our attention to anything with even the most tangential connection to tradeskills and Days of Summer comes with a lot of items for decorating houses - but somehow I missed it. She has a page with all the details we know so far.

Fortunately, although the event began as a limited-time affair last year, it proved so popular it now stays in game as a permanent fixture. Yun Zi spends his entire life standing around in Sundered Frontier, making inane small-talk and handing out amazingly good items no casual player can afford to ignore.

He's acquired a tiny companion called Pas Yu this year, a panda of extremely restricted stature, who acts as his bag holder. I nearly missed him after I'd finished the first quest. He has all the sweet loot and it is sweet indeed.

To do the quests you need to have at least one max level character and the gear you get is Level 110 (making a lot of it upgrades for me even after the expansion has been out for almost a year). The housing items work for any level and some of the upgrades are suitable for level 100 and up. Once you complete the quest on a single character, any character on the account can shop at Yun Zi's for the low price of no money at all.

Like last year, there will be eight weeks of quests. The new quest comes with the weekly patch/server restart on Tuesdays. You have to have completed all of last year's quests before you can do this year's but if you're just getting started you can do both sets.

Using a guide, like the one on EQ2Traders or the wiki, each quest only takes a few minutes, especially if you use the wonderful and essential Fast Travel option from the Map window. If you're an All Access member you get that for free (and it's worth the monthly sub on its own in my opinion) but since you also have to be a Member to do the quests in the first place that's not a problem.

I raced around Antonica last night on the first of this year's quests and it was really good fun and very nostalgic. I found I could remember the exact location of every stop without having to check. I've spent so many hours in Antonica I know it as well as I know the countryside around my own home.

I was also lucky enough to arrive there at gametime sunset. Antonica has some absolutely spectacular skies at dawn and dusk. The graphics in the older part of the game are showing their age but the skyboxes are still as breathtaking as ever.

Like last year, Days of Summer is going to prep casual players for the Autumn expansion, although if DBG follow last year's model the expansion itself will start with free gear that's even better. This kind of thing is why I rate the current DBG team so highly. I've never felt so well looked after as a casual player. Long may it continue.

This One Goes To 11 : EQ2, GW2

There are reportedly more than three hundred developers/designers/artists working on GW2. I very much doubt there are thirty working on EQ2. If you asked me which team was more productive I'd have to say the Daybreak squad wins, hands down.

I play both of these MMOs week in, week out. I spend far more time in GW2, partly because of World vs World's endless replayability, partly because it's the most fluid-feeling MMO I've ever played and partly because it's the game Mrs Bhagpuss plays.

Well, it was. She's going through something of an MMO malaise at the moment, not really playing at all. The Path of Fire expansion certainly hasn't fired her enthusiasm. She logged in once, played through the first chapter, logged out and that's the last the game has seen of her since.

I've played GW2 almost non-stop since we got back from holiday but already, only a week and a half or so in from where I started, my attention is wandering. I finished the story on my Druid at the weekend and I have absolutely no desire to do it again on anyone else for a good long while.

I got my Jackal mount two days ago and I'm about halfway through the lengthy "quest" for the Griffon. I've picked up 180 Hero Points without thinking about it and I guess by the time I have the flying lion I'll have filled out the 250 I need for the new Elite Spec.

I don't even know what the spec called, that's how uninterested in the new Elites I am. The only one I've read up on is Weaver for the Elementalist, which sounds horrible and by general consensus is not as good as Tempest from HoT.

I barely used the Hot Elites. Most of my characters are still in whatever build they took when they hit 80, which for many of them was the best part of five years ago. I use Tempest for the overloads and Druid as a heal-based survival build but other than that I don't think I've even tested the rest, let alone learned how to use them. The last thing I need is another lot.

Two nights this week I logged in after work intending to carry on with the Griffon quest and instead ended up defending keeps in WvW for three hours. Then I logged out and went to bed.

It took 300+ people more than two years to come up with this stuff. I'm not saying I'll be done with it in a month or two; there's a wealth of long-term, background material in PoF that I'll be picking away at for years, just as I'm still picking away at Heart of Thorns and the base game.

What I am saying is that the amount of entertainment on offer is not ten times what I'm getting from EQ2, nor is it an order of magnitude better, or deeper, or wider.

Massively OP irritate the heck out of me with their coverage of Daybreak. It's relentlessly, grindingly, dismally negative. I dislike the editorial tone and attitude so much when they ride this particular hobbyhorse that I'm not even going to link to an example. Why encourage them?

Still, it doesn't do to be complacent. Feldon deciding to throw in the towel at EQ2Wire hasn't helped dispel the image of a floundering ship and the astonishing and inexorable rise of PUBG, damming what was presumably a major income stream at H1Z1 is a worrying factor.

As Wilhelm summarized, two and a half years after the sale of SOE's portfolio to unknown quantity Columbus Nova, we're really none the wiser about either the commercial viability of the MMOs or their stability in the medium-term. We don't even know the intended direction of travel.

Gossip persists that DBG is not a happy ship. Some known names have left, including a few of the biggest. Communication between the company and the players, while informative and ongoing, tends either to be formal and undemonstrative or inappropriately truculent.

And yet, for all that, as a very long-term player, fan and customer, I cannot remember the games themselves ever feeling better cared for. Looking specifically at EQ2, the DBG game I play the most these days, updates aren't just regular and reliable, they often weigh in at well in excess of anything that might have been expected.

Each holiday adds new content and Norrath has a lot of holidays. In Spring we got a major addition to the game with Familiars and Summer brought a whole season of Ethereals, something both valued and expected by the hardcore audience.

Familiars have, I think, been well received and the way Ethereals were handled this year seems to have avoided some of the problems of the past. The enormously rewarding, eight week Days of Summer quest has been almost universally praised, as has the decision to remove the time limit and keep it as permanent content.

As Autumn rolls in it brings with it the traditional pre-expansion warm-up. The ever-welcome Gear up, Level Up event is back and along with it the first of the quests that will introduce the theme of the expansion.

I ran through Strange Sensations with my Berserker earlier this week. It took me about ninety minutes and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's very well-written, with characters that immediately feel convincing and a plot that intrigues. I particularly enjoyed the nuanced, metafictional philosophizing.

I love the writing in EQ2. Like GW2, the writers put words in my character's mouth but for once they're the kind of words I believe he would say. Some of the things that came out of my Druid's mouth as he worked through the plot of Path of Fire had me swearing at the screen in irritation. Not so in EQ2.

The Strange Sensations quest also follows what appears to be an enthusiastically embraced practice at Daybreak these days - user-friendliness. There's a lot of traveling involved but the dark elf wizard with whom you mainly deal opens a handy portal every time to send you just where you need to go. I really appreciated that, especially after the lengthy tours the panda had me running (which were, of course, entirely appropriate to, and indeed the essence of, that quest).

I was surprised just how delighted I was to find Lendinaria waiting for me in Skyshrine. Lendinaria is a dragon and I've met a lot of dragons over the years but she's one of my favorites. She's certainly one of the dragons I remember best. It did genuinely feel like unexpectedly running into an old friend.

When someone from my supposed past crops up in GW2's storyline I generally struggle to remember ever meeting them before. When I do remember them, as in the case of the execrable Ellen Kiel, I mostly wish I could let them take a really close look at the business end of a big stick.

Then there are the rewards. In GW2 you're lucky if you get a mini. Okay, let's be reasonable: in Path of Fire you almost always get a mini. Not one you're ever going to use, and because everyone gets one they trade for a few silver on the markets so there's not even much point selling it, but still, it's a mini. Plus a load of crafting mats, some armor you can salvage into more crafting mats, some skins you'll never wear and some bits and pieces that you don't really know what they're for.

In EQ2 you get stuff you want and stuff you need. Stuff with value. Days of Summer was like winning the lottery. Strange Sensations only gives you two items but they are excellent: three 25-day Research Time Reducers, always most welcome, and an Ascension Level boost from what I thought was the max level (10) to 11.

I confess I don't understand Ascension Classes. I have one levelled up to halfway through Level 4 so far and I have yet to use it. I have it pigeon-holed as End Game Stuff, nothing to do with me.

If you read the official EQ2 forums it seems Ascension is Pay to Win and everyone hates it but then if you read the official EQ2 forums everyone has been saying that about everything since about 2004. I'll learn about Ascension if and when I find I can't do stuff I want to do without it. So far, not happened.

It's October so everything's turning orange. According to EQ2Traders Norrath's Halloween Holiday, Nights of the Dead is back, with a ton of new items to craft or buy, new achievements, a new quest and a load of tweaks and improvements to the plethora of existing spooky stuff.

We don't have a release date yet but the expansion will most likely arrive in November. DBG pop one of these things out every year like clockwork. Some are better than others but they're all solid and entertaining.

I have a good feeling about this year's; the EQ2 team have really been on a roll these last few months and for all the relentless Eeyoring of the community I do sense a glimmer of grudging appreciation behind the scowls, here and there.

It may well be that Norrath's days are numbered. All the MMOs are aging. The prospects of attracting new players must be vanishingly small and hanging on to those who are left must get harder every year. Nothing lasts forever but in this case we don't have any certainty that Columbus Nova even wants it to last.

For all that, the games feel in great shape. For my money, EQ2's small team does every bit as well as GW2's large one. If the ship goes down it won't be for lack of expertise or effort from the crew.

I'm just going to enjoy what we have while we have it. And if Mrs Bhagpuss turns out to be done with GW2, I may well find I have a lot more time to spend in Norrath. There's so much more I want to do there, still. 

Here Comes Summer! : EQ2

Just a heads-up for anyone who may be currently subbed to EQ2 but not playing: don't miss the new Days of Summer event.

It arrived without much of a fanfare and I could easily have missed it if it hadn't been for the ever-alert Feldon at EQ2Wire. The official Daybreak announcement is here.

This isn't an event that you do for the fun of of it, although, like all EQ2 quests and events someone has taken the trouble to give it both context and content. I enjoyed doing the first one but enjoyment is the bonus.

What this is all about is catch-up. Even with max-level boosts and the like, the end game of EQ2 is stratospheric.

I play fairly regularly. I've completed the storyline of the current expansion and done a bit of grunt work to improve some of my gear beyond what that provides. As a solo player I'm happy with where I am but compared to anyone doing Heroic Dungeons regularly I'm a wet-behind-the-ears newbie and let's not even talk about raid-equipped...

And that's just on a single character. None of my several max level alts is even in anything like that good shape.

Yun Zi is here to fix all that. Or at least give you hope. Hope that you might be able to take the forthcoming expansion at a canter rather than a crawl.

The diffident panda has unlimited stocks of the kind of gear you'd get from doing Heroics or better.

They are free. The only "cost" is being flagged for a specific number of weeks of his quests.

He has sought-after adornments in the colors you can't easily get solo. He has armor and weapons better than I've been able to get from Public Quests (which themselves give better gear than the solo rewards from the last expansion).

He has boosts to Divine Potency (which I am guessing I should know what it is...) and to raise an Ascension Class to Level 5 from scratch (I'm still just short of Level 4 on the only one I've tried to level - I lost focus on that months back).

All this and more has clearly been added to his inventory in order to allow both returning players and casuals like me to bootstrap themselves to something like viability for the current expectations of Heroic content and to give us a fighting chance at what's coming later in the year.

Even if you don't need to upgrade your gear or you're not interested in being hardcore this is still an event you won't want to miss. Yun Zi has mounts, prestige houses and a large stock of decorating items. There's something here for all playstyles.

What's more, and what's unusual, if not unheard of in EQ2, doing the quests on one character opens up the rewards for every character on that account. This makes the whole event very attractive not only to laggards like me but to committed, regular players as well.

People have been complaining that the current direction of development has been hard on alts: this is a response to those complaints.

The event looks to have been constructed in such a way as to avoid grind of any kind. Not only is it once per account but the first week's quest, which I did last night, took me less than a quarter of an hour (following the wiki). If you remember the Bootstrutter quests from the original release, it's like that; all you need to do is visit some locations then come back and tell the panda what you saw.

I'd go so far as to suggest that even of you aren't currently subbed, this event might be worth resubbing for if you have any intention of playing EQ2 again in the next expansion cycle. For the price of a couple of months' All Access this is a bargain.

The event runs from Tuesday, August 1st, 12:01AM PT to Monday, October 2nd at 11:59PM PT and each new week should presumably begin with the regular Tuesday patch.

I'm going make sure I don't miss any of them. I just hope they're all as quick and easy as the first!