EverQuest II - Guides, Links And Not-So-Helpful Advice

Last week Cliff, who's returned to EverQuest II again, apparently inspired so to do, at least in part, by reading some of my recent posts here, left a comment asking, among other things, if I had any sites to recommend that might help with things like understanding the stats in the game or figuring out which AAs are important. Just regular stuff like that, which you might think the game itself would explain.

It doesn't, of course, or not in any particularly helpful way. There's only so much you can do with a tool-tip and EQII doesn't have one of those nifty in-game encyclopedias that tell you everything you need to know. Not that those are ever much help, judging by the ones I've seen in other games.

It's not that SOE or Daybreak or Darkpaw, or whoever was nominally in charge when any and all of the myriad systems and mechanics in the game were added, didn't bother to explain them. It's more that any explanations were couched in long-forgotten press releases, AMAs and forum posts or latterly in Discord discussions, which are even harder to find. The entire game is a palimpsest of ideas, good and bad, some of which have flourished, some of which have atrophied, but all of which have been very poorly cataloged and annotated.

As with most MMORPGs, the best resources for the kind of detailed information that really tells you what you want to know has always come from other people who play the game. Once upon a time, EQII was rich in such resources but not any more. Many have gone dark and the few that remain tend to stop at a certain point, when whoever was updating them lost interest or gave up playing.

After I gave a few less than helpful answers to Cliff's general and specific questions, I had a bit of a think about it and decided I might see if I could find out if any sites that might be useful were still around. I started googling but it was slow going. The returns were meager. Still, there were a few useful results. I thought I might be able to put something together.

And then I ran across this thread on Reddit, the contents of which I am now going to cut and paste into this post just in case the thread gets unstickied or disappears. Full credit for the following goes to Mandalore93, who did all the actual work.

 Official EQ2 Links

• EverQuest 2 Official Site

  • EverQuest 2 Server Status

  • EverQuest 2 Support

• EverQuest 2 Forums

  • News and Announcements (Archive)

    News and Announcements (New) 

  • EQ2 Patch Notes (Archive)

    EQ2 Patch Notes (New) 

    EQ2 Staff Post Tracker (Archive) 

  • EQ2 Staff Post Tracker (New)

• EverQuest 2 Official Discord

EQ2 Guilds

• EQ2 Guild Recruitment Forum

Resource & Info Sites 

• EverQuest 2 Wiki

  • Megaton's Varsoon TLE Guide 

• EQ2U  

• EQ2 Trader's Corner 

• EQ2 Furniture

EQ2 Add Ons

• EQ2 Interface

• EQ2 Maps

• Advanced Combat Tracker

Guides & Strategy

• EQ2 AA Calculator

• Comprehensive Tradeskill Equipment List

• Tradeskill Timeline

• Harvesting Timeline

• Food and Drink Comparison

• EQ2 Travel Baubles - (Sigrdrifa's post, specifically.)

• EQ2 TLE Youtube content by Bear Necessities

I have checked all the links They all work, although at time of writing the EQII API is non-functional so the EQ2U site is of limited functionality. Darkpaw are supposedly working on fixing the API so it should be restored to it's usual self at some point. Cross your fingers! Also, when I tested it, EQ2 Trader's Corner had exceeded its permitted bandwidth and wasn't responding. Presumably that, too, is a temporary condition.

I also removed two links from the guild section because they threw up a malware warning when I clicked on them. You can find them in the Reddit thread if you want to take your chances.

And I added in links to the current forums where appropriate. Mandalore93's links go to the old forums but I've left those in because there's a ton of useful archive information there, at least for as long as Darkpaw keep the old pages up.

As you'll see if you click through all these links, many of them go either to the official Daybreak EQII website or to the excellent EQ2i wiki. In all honesty, these are probably the two most reliable sources these days. There used to be a lot more but time has withered most of them away.

For anyone coming back or just starting, I would strongly recommend Megaton's Varsoon TLE Guide, regardless of whether you plan on playing on the Varsoon server or not. Apart from the restored starting areas, which don't exist on the Live servers, I think most of the rest will be there or thereabouts correct for content on Live, up to wherever Varsoon has gotten to right now. I believe it should be going into the Chains of Eternity expansion next month, which will give it a level cap of 95, right before everything changes at 100, so the guide will stand as the definitive source for how to play what now feels like almost a separate game.

Cliff also asked a couple of very pertinent, specific questions that I ought to be able to answer. Unfortunately, I can't. Not with any confidence, anyway.

One was about stats and what they mean. If only I knew! It would make things so much easier. 

Stats have changed many times. I understood them once but that was a long time ago. The Megaton guide has an very illuminating overview on how they've altered over the years and, more importantly, on what's most important now. It's in the "Adventuring" section. My rule of thumb is that it's generally your Primary stat, Stamina, Potency, Crit Chance and Ability Mod you want to concentrate on but don't quote me on that. It does keep changing...

The one crucial stat Megaton's guide doesn't mention is Resolve. Varsoon hasn't gotten to the expansion that introduced it yet. Resolve, for players on Live servers, is probably the most important stat of all.

Resolve is explained in enormous detail here on the wiki. It doesn't become relevant until Level 100, after which it becomes absolutely central to Heroic and Raid players but less so for soloists. It does still gatekeep solo content but since every expansions gives you a full set of gear with the required Resolve for solo instances, you don't really need know much more than to be sure to pick that up and equip it before you start any new expansion. It'll usually be in a container with the name "Tishan" attached, next to an NPC in the very first area you arrive in.

What Resolve does do is make for a very handy way to decide if a new item is an upgrade or not. If anything you find has higher resolve than what you have, you'll want to swap it in, unless there's some triggered or passive effect you particularly want to keep on the old piece.

On the topic of free gear, solo players working their way up the levels probably also want to make sure they do the Panda quests. There's a ton of free stuff in there, much of it worth having although the Tishan's items tend to overwrite it. 

Cliff's other question was about AAs, which for anyone that doesn't know stands for Alternative Advancement. I wish I could give a good answer to this one. I can confirm that having the right AA build can make a huge difference. 

For example, a few years back, I read a comment on the forums that explained why my Berserker wasn't feeling nearly as robust as he should have. I applied the advice given there and he immediately became much more powerful. 

For what it's worth, I wrote about that in this post and the forum comment that helped me is here. The key AA in that case is Enhanced Vigor in the Prestige line. Max it to double your hit points.

The good thing about AAs in EQII is that you can have multiple builds saved and swap between them, although it is a bit of a faff to do. The best I can suggest if you're not sure what to take is to make a few builds and swap between them. 

And that, I think, is about as helpful as I can be. There are a myriad of quests that give all kinds of highly useful and desirable items and abilities but trying to list them would take forever. I'd suggest keeping Overseer up to date as you go along, if possible, although it can be a diabolical grind. The various time-reducers it gives for Mount, Mercenary, Familiar and Spell progress are invaluable. 

Always remember to keep your upgrades for all of those going and, if you have the time, do the Familiars Wild quest daily every day. At higher levels (Post-100, really.) a huge proportion of your effectiveness comes not from your own stats but from those of your Mount, Merc and Familiar.

But I'm not going to get into that in detail. I barely understand the how the synergies work myself and certainly not well enough to explain them. As I keep saying, systems and mechanics in the game are ferociously complicated now and as population and interest continue to drift down, accurate, up-to-date resources are increasingly hard to come by. 

I hope that helps a bit, anyway.

How To Beat Triad Of Elements - The Easy Way!

I just finished my first run-through of Triad of Elements, the new solo dungeon that was added to EverQuest II last week  for the SummerJubilee. It took me a couple of hours - or a couple of days, depending on how you care to measure it. 

If you complete the instance ten times, you get three "plumes" to go in the new Plume slot. The plumes aren't Heirloom. They're No Trade. That means you'll  need to do the instance ten times for every character you want to have one.

By doing the instance ten times, you also earn the right to buy a recipe book you can scribe to let you craft plumes that aren't quite as good. This is so people who haven't done the instance can have a plume, which is handy for two reasons. 

Firstly, the instance will go away when there isn't an event on to support it, so from time to time crafted plumes will be all that's available to new or returning characters. Secondly, the effects of the plumes are cumulative, based on how many people in a group are wearing one, so if you do any group content, people are almost certainly going to be inspecting you to check that you are.

Come over here and say that!

If you do the instance twenty times, you can buy even better plumes from the event merchant so unless you're happy to be that guy with the crappy crafted plume, chances are you're going to be running Triad of Elements at least ten times and more likely twenty.

I don't know about you, but I don't much enjoy running the same instances over and over again. I barely want to run most of them once. The idea of spending forty hours grinding through the same really annoying five bosses twenty times each does not spark joy. 

Of course, the first run is always the slowest. It wouldn't be two hours every time. Even so, it's still going to be a long-ass pain in the butt. Right?

Nope. Not at all. 

My first run may have taken a couple of hours but my next run probably won't take me more than twenty minutes. If that. And most of that will be the running from one stage to the next.

Yes, Zel. It does look like a dragon...

Here, I'll tell you what. I'll knock up a quick guide so you'll be able to zip through the whole thing in no time, too. I don't usually do guides but this one's pretty straightforward. I can sum it up in a single sentence if you like.

Hell, why waste a whole sentence? Here's my one-word guide to acing the Triad of Elements in next-to-no time, at no risk whatsoever, while still getting all the rewards. Ready? 

Chronomentor!

Yep. That's it. That's all you you need to do. Go to your friendly Timeless Chronomage in the starting city of your choice, pick a number very much lower than the number next to your character's name, pay the trivial fee to have yourself converted into a pint-sized powerhouse, able to one-punch dragons and stand in the fire without singeing an eyelash.

Don't forget to resummon your merc and your mount and your familiar and your anything else that needs to be reset to the new level, although honestly you're probably not going to need them. It's going to be a cakewalk.

I'd love to be able to claim credit for this amazing strategy but I was trudging through the damn thing at my regular level, when I tabbed out to look something up and happened upon the tip in a forum thread complaining about the instance being unreasonably difficult for healing classes.  

Do you need me to go get the magician, miss?

That was today. I wasn't playing a healer at the time, I was playing my Berserker, but it was still going too slowly for my tastes. 

When I'd started the instance on Saturday evening, I didn't know chronomentoring was even an option. The first time, I went in with Mitsu, thinking it would be a good way to get some xp and level her up a bit, while learning how the dungeon worked and getting some screenshots for the inevitable post. 

Triad of Elements is an unusual instance in that it scales all the way from level one to the cap. You can go in at any level and it will be your level, with appropriate loot and XP. It's also a true solo instance, not one of those Heroics where you get a buff going in to allow you to handle the difficulty. The mobs are proper solo mobs, which is great, except that proper solo mobs at level can be quite tough, particularly when you're as undergeared as Mitsu is and also have no clue how to play your class, like I don't.

After a few minutes, when I hadn't even worked out how to get out of the first room, I decided there must be easier ways to level. I did a bit of googling to see if anyone had written a guide yet. They hadn't but Naimi Denmother had posted a complete video walkthrough on her YouTube channel so I watched the first part of that, up to the first boss.

The video's extremely helpful but also unedited and, as Denmum says, not a speed run. It lasts almost three-quarters of an hour, which is time you can knock off the two hours I said it took me to complete the whole thing, because I stopped after each boss and watched the next part of the video, just to be sure I wouldn't get any unpleasant surprises.

This all started at about seven in the evening on Saturday, which in retrospect was a really dumb time to start anything that couldn't be stopped at a moment's notice. Beryl the dog comes alive in the evenings. The time to do dungeons and kill boss mobs is in the morning, when she's comatose, or in the early afternoon, when she just idles, waiting to see if anything exciting might happen.

I was aware of that when I began. I figured I could do one boss before she woke up and started batting my mouse hand with her paws. I was exactly right, too. I'd only just killed the first boss when she charged up and went into her "Come on! It's my time now!" routine.

Which would have been fine, if I hadn't just discovered that the first boss drops an item you need to kill the second boss and that item is flagged Temporary, No Rent, meaning it was going to vanish the moment I zoned out of the instance or logged out of the game. 

I did consider leaving everything running and coming back to start up where I left off after our walk but I wasn't confident the PC wouldn't lock up or EQII freeze or some such irritation. Better stop and start over another time.

Anyone got a pack of cards?

Which is what I did today. I logged back in, still in the instance, just to make sure that pesky Temporary item really had disappeared. It had. It was while I was trying to find out if there was any way to get another that I chanced upon the aforementioned forum thread and thereby saved myself a very great deal of time, trouble and tribulation.

After kicking myself for not thinking of it without having to be told, I mapped to Freeport, set my level from 125 to 50, cancelled the persistent instance, mapped back to Moors of Ykesha and went through the portal again. There was a small crowd waiting outside, presumably for their timers to run down so they could go back in for another run. I think you can do it every ninety minutes. 

I worked steadily through the five bosses, stopping to watch Denmum's video before each, which was what took up most of the time. Every non-boss mob in the entire place was a one-shot, if I even bothered to fight them. Most of them killed themselves getting riposted as they set upon me.

The bosses took longer because they all have mechanics to negotiate. At the speed I was going, I found those mechanics entertaining and interesting, which I can assure you would not have been the case if I'd had to do it properly. I categorically prefer combat to be trivial and quick these days. 

There's no equivocating about it any more. I'm too old for "challenging" fights and contrary to popular opinion, I find this kind of content more entertaining the easier it gets. I'm orders of magnitude more likely to do my twenty Triad runs now I can speed-run them at no risk than I was when I thought I'd have had to plod through, taking care and attention.

And don't get up!

It would still be worth doing it this way just for the plume unlocks, even if the loot that dropped was for the reduced, chronomentored level but thankfully it's not. The dungeon gives you loot appropriate to your real level, which for my Berserker meant a couple of  minor upgrades as well as a very nice crafting book he didn't have. 

It was a weaponsmith book, which is his specialism, and it contains three recipes for Resolve 410 weapons, which would be an upgrade for anyone on the account except him. He'll be making them for everyone that can use a sword, dagger or mace.

All in all, it was a fun experience but the best part is knowing I'll be able to zip through it quickly and painlessly in very short sessions as many times as I fancy. Always assuming no grognard at Darkpaw decides we should all have to do it the way they think it was meant to be done, of course.

Hmm... 

I probably should've kept all this to myself, shouldn't I? I guess I'd better get on and do it a few more times before they catch on...

How's That For First Impressions? - Bless Unleashed.

 

On Monday I finally found the time to play Bless Unleashed for more than half an hour. I played for most of the late afternoon and evening and enjoyed every minute of it. Altogether I've racked up just under eight hours so far. I've made it out of the tutorial, out of the starting area and past the first city to the next major settlement. Last night I dinged thirteen. I think I've seen enough for a First Impressions piece although nowhere remotely close to enough for a review.

Cutting to the chase, I really like Bless Unleashed. I was fairly sure I would. Of all the recent trials and tests I've reported on this summer, the BU open beta was the one I enjoyed the most. When it ended I had that itchy, unsatisfied feeling that comes when you want to play a particular game and can't. That's always a good sign, uncomfortable though it feels.

As I play through the same content a few weeks later, I'm surprised to find just how far I got last time and how much I missed along the way. The world feels very much as I remembered but the gameplay seems a little different because of the class I've picked. I definitely found combat easier as a Crusader but then when did Priests ever have levelling easy?

Let's break it down a little:

Graphics - They look pretty good to me but it's probably best to ask someone with a computer that's less than five years old. To appreciate Bless Unleashed in all its glory you'd need a much better rig than mine. Frankly, my PC is getting to the age now where pretty soon I'm not going to be able to play new games at all, not even mmorpgs, let alone see them as they're meant to be seen with all the full-on gleams and sparkles.

That said, even though the game defaults to the lowest possible settings when it sees my specs, when I hike everything up to "Normal" it all runs smoothly and looks good. I can run it at higher than that, too, without too many complaints from my computer. It's a very great deal more than I can say for New World, where I thought smoke was going to start coming out of the back of the case much of the time I played, even with everything set to full potato.

Within those restrictions, Bless Unleashed looks gorgeous. It reminds me strongly of Black Desert Online in the grit and detail of the settlements and of Final Fantasy XIV in the way the landscape appears wide and open but really isn't. There's a deal of funnelling going on but it's subtly done. I never felt I was on rails and I kept stopping to take screenshots, which is always a good sign.

Character Appearances - My character, as I noted in a previous post, does look astonishingly bland. In close up she barely seems to have any expression at all and her fur seems undiferrentiated and flat. I have a feeling I made her that way in character creation, though. I need to try again and see if the same thing happens before I pass judgment. Also, it might be my graphics settings, as discussed earlier.

One thing that really stands out in the early stages of the game is how sensible and "realistic" just about every player-character looks. There are no tower-sized shoulderpads, no swords larger than the people weilding them, no-one's on fire or trailing showers of sparks or flurries of leaves behind them as they run. No-one glows like an irradiated comic-book villain. Maybe that's all going to change as people level up. I imagine it will. It's a healthy way to start, even so.

Even healthier are the fashions on show. Again, I'm sure this won't last, but so far I haven't seen anyone of any gender running around in their underwear or looking like they're auditioning for a job as a Vegas showgirl. Everyone is wearing something that looks either like respectable city clothing or functional, practical armor. The nearest I've seen to a skin show were a couple of people in shorts and even they looked more like Eagle Scouts setting out on a hike than disco dancers on a smoke break.

UI and Combat - An odd pairing, perhaps, but they both suffer from the same problem: it's extremely clear that Bless Unleashed is meant to be played with a controller not a keyboard and mouse. It just feels clunky with a traditional PC set-up. 

Whoever programmed it all really likes the space bar. Space, instead of being used to jump, as I'm muscle-trained to expect, is the default out-of-combat "Do Everything" key. Want to buy something? Space. Want the text to scroll faster? Space. Want to aknowledge a quest? Space. I'm just surprised Space isn't the "Interact with Environment" key. That's "F" as it is in so many games. 

I need to check if there's any way to reprogram all the rest from Space to "F". That would make things a lot more handy. I did look but I couldn't see that keys were reassignable. I didn't look very hard, though. They might be. And if not now, maybe one day.

That way I could at least get jump back where it belongs. Now, any time I want to jump I have to hit CTRL, which I manage about one time in five. To sprint you need to hold down Shift but Valheim trained me for that, so it's okay. 

All of this is nothing I can't get used to. I'm halfway there already. Lots of mmorpgs have semi-awkward UIs. At least we aren't looking at the borderline insanity of Final Fantasy XI. Still, I'd rather the game made its origins and its preferences a little less obvious. 

Combat is fiddly. Space becomes your dodge key and dodging is about as crucial in Bless Unleashed as it is in GW2, I think. I won fights I thought were beyond me once I started hammering that space bar at the opportune moment.  

To build good DPS you have to learn and execute a lot of combos. Action games generally do that to an extent but some, like BDO and New World, pretty much let you get away with hammering left and right mouse almost at random. Bless Unleashed doesn't. Not only are the actual left-right sequences important, the way they are in DCUO for example, there are cooldowns to consider, too. You can't just mash the buttons and hope some combos will fall out. 

Fortunately for me, with my memory and my innate aversion to combo-making, the required sequences are handily displayed on-screen in real time. The placing is discreetly off-center to the right and it was a while before I noticed. When I did it made things somewhat easier. I'm never going to like it, though.

It's an important thing to remember when you consider how positive I'm being about the game as a whole and of my experience playing it. I'm having a great time even though I find the UI awkward and the combat hard to manage. If Bless Unleashed had traditional tab-target and hot key combat with a free mouse pointer on screen at all times, right now I'd be making comparisons with Guild Wars 2 and wondering whether I might be able to persuade Mrs Bhagpuss to give it a try with a view to us both playing for a while.

 

Music and Sound - After that lengthy discursion, a short note. The music is excellent and so is the soundscaping, by which I mean I've heard nothing at all that jars or seems out of place, which ought to be the primary aim of any video game score. I don't think I have much more to say than that, yet. For a proper music review I'd need to stop and listen and so far I've been too keen on getting stuff done. What I've noticed, though, I've liked very much.

Plot and Dialog -  Let's lump these two together for once even though they're very different beasts. I'm enjoying the main plot so far. It's staggeringly unoriginal but I count that in its favor. Increasingly I see mmorpgs as a form not unlike pantomime or film noir. There are certain conventions that should be adhered to, certain expectations that ought to be fulfilled. By all means be creative and innovative within those conventions but to step outside them entirely is a mistake. 

So far my character is deep in the traditional tale of lost homes, slaughtered friends, arch-nemeses and new allies. There are great forces at work somewhere out of sight but right now the gnolls are attacking the outlying farms and the goblins are getting involved and anyone who can can carry a blade the right way round is ripe for conscription into the militia.

Oh, it's so good to be fighting gnolls and goblins again!  And bandits! If there's one thing I didn't realize I'd missed it's that. Every game seems to want to invent its own menagerie of mythical monsters and sinister criminals but I just want to snatch the badges and lop the ears and tails off the ones I already know.

 

I'm underselling the originality of the plot a little, too. I finished last session working to find the reason behind the unlikely gnoll-goblin alliance and it turned out to be not at all what I expected. I do like a little drug-related skullduggery.

So much for the main plot. There are also plenty of side-quests which, as is the way of these things, vary in quality. As does the dialog. Now that's an odd one. 

In my last post on Bless Unleashed I praised the quality of the writing as "excellent". It is, in places. More often than not the on-screen text is fluent, demotic and natural. It reads well and gives the strong impression of having been crafted by a more than competent writer whose first language is English. Those quests are a pleasure to read.

There are others not as good. None of them are terrible. All of them make sense, don't exhibit any gross grammatical errors and follow most of the basic semantic requirements of English speech. The problem is, those dialogs never sound like anything someone whose first language was English would actually say. It's the difference between a native speaker and a technically proficient learner who's never had the opportunity to test their skills in a real, native-speaking environment.

Very clearly, some quests were given to different people or even different departments to dialog or to translate. Luckily, so far at least, far more of the work seems to have gone to the people who knew what they were doing. 

 

Questing and Gameplay - Overall, I'm very much enjoying the questing, both for its traditional nature and for the amusing repartee in the well-written sections. There are lots of kill quests, fetch quests, click on things quests and hide in a bush while people talk indiscretely about their secret plans quests. 

I like all of those as genre archetypes but in the case of Bless Unleashed I also like the way they've been implemented. The kill and fetch quests mostly ask for small numbers - threes or fives - although I suspect the numbers may be edging up as I gain levels. So far all the things to be killed or collected have been plentiful and prominent. I've only done one escort quest so far but it was a joyous moment when my rescuee announced he was perferctly capable of finding his own way home and the quest completed before I had to take him anywhere.

As I mentioned, there's a wide selection of side quests available. I've only been taking the ones I happen across as I travel but the questgivers are marked on the map so I can see there are far more than I've found by chance. I'm saving the rest for the next character I make. It will serve to vary the experience around the main story quest, which I'm guessing is an unavoidable levelling path for all characters.

 

Gear, Gold and Rewards - I'm a little vague on this. There are quite a lot of slots to fill and I have something in most of them by now. No rings yet. The main quest gives some good upgrades as do some of the side quests. I think I've had gear drop but I wouldn't swear to it. Gold drops a lot. 

Vendors have some odd things. I bought a gramophone from a one just because I wanted to see what it did. You can place it in the open world and it plays a bizarre, electro version of Chopsticks. It's bigger than my character! Single-use only but well worth the 3,000 gold all the same. 3k gold is chump change.

There's a whole raft of log-in rewards and every time the server hiccups some kind of compensation package arrives in the mail. I have a ton of chests and boxes I haven't even opened yet because I'm more worried about filling up my storage than I am about missing out on the buffs and boosts I imagine they contain.

I've played a lot of these imported free-to-play and buy-to-play mmorpgs now and one thing I've learned is that trying to keep up with all the free stuff they throw at you can make things seem more complicated than they really are. It's very easy to get the impression you need all this stuff or at least that you shouldn't ignore it. You don't and you should.

If you're just playing casually, for fun, the gameplay itself is going to give you everything you need. Yes, you can slap on all the bonuses if you want but why are you trying to go faster or make it easier? You're only level 10! Later on I'm sure this stuff will come into its own but at this stage it's just clutter you don't need. I'm leaving most of mine in the mail.

Mounts - Except for these. Bless Unleashed has a lot of creatures you can ride. If you open
your Stable from the UI you can see them all, greyed out of course because you don't own any of them yet. Except I do. I own three. 

There's a sheep you're given at some point in the main quest. I rode that in beta and liked it well enough. 

Then there's the garish rainbow-colored ostrich we all got as compensation for the overcrowded servers at launch. A lot of people are riding those and they look... silly.

I'm riding some sort of golden hyena, which is, of course, extremely sensible. It's a reward for taking part in the open beta. So far I haven't seen a single player other than me riding one, although I've seen a ton of people sporting the "Breaker of Games" beta title. I don't know if that means not everyone got the mount or if it's such a terrible choice no-one else wants to use it. I like mine I'm going to keep on riding it. For now.

Summary - As I said at the top, I really like Bless Unleashed. I've barely seen any of it, though, so what do I know, really? This is just a First Impressions piece. In a week or a month I may have discovered it's a terrible game for some reason I can't as yet imagine. It seems unlikely, though.

What I do know is that most of the game is waiting to reveal itself to me. All I have to go on is the little I've seen on my trip into the teens. There's much, much more, or I trust there is.

I know there's crafting because I've seen a number crafting stations in the settlements. I know there's fishing because I found the guy who sells the rods and bait and I bought some and caught a few fish. I know there are dungeons and PvP and at least two upgrade/enhancement mechanics I don't yet understand. There are achievements although they're not called that. I forget what they are called. There may or may not be pets. I don't think there's housing. 

Whatever there is, I'm keen to find out. I like Bless Unleashed and that's my first impression. What my last impression will be, who can say? But no-one ever does Last Impressions posts, do they?

How To Do Now: An Overview Of Guild Wars 2's Marionette

She's back! For one week only, Scarlet Briar and her amazing Marionette. Performances every two hours, only at The Eye of The North. Get in line now!

Yes, the promised return of Guild Wars 2's best ever structured event began on Tuesday after the update. The public event runs for just one week, ending when next week's patch lands but there's also a private version that should be available indefinitely.

Here's how it works:

Both versions are accessed via the Scrying Pool in current content hub, Eye of the North. You used to have to own the Path of Fire expansion to go there (or have legacy rights from the pre-launch events a decade ago, I guess) but that requirement has been dropped. Now you just need to be Level 80. If you've never been there before, no worries; there's a one-time portal scroll in the mail that will take you there and open the waypoint for you permanently.

The 50-person private Squad instance is always available. If you want to start one, use the Scrying Pool. More likely, if you want to join one, use the LFG function and search under Tyria - Squads. Right now there are lots of people doing it but as folks get the rewards and the achievements they want it will calm down. Based on other, similar content, though, there will most likely be Commanders and guilds looking to form up fairly regularly, especially at weekends. GW2 is very good at keeping older content in play.

When you've found your squad, join up and follow instructions. Do not zone into the instance via the Scrying Pool yourself. Wait for the pop-up invitation and accept that. Then just listen, pay attention and do what everyone else does is my advice.

If you're there for the Public version, check the Event Timer for the next one, arrive around the top of the hour, go to the Scrying pool, click on the Public button when it appears and zone in. Then you can either run around like a lone wolf and tick everyone off or you can join a lane, follow a tag and behave like a socially responsible person. Your call.

The mechanics are virtually unchanged from seven years ago but if you can remember much of the detail you have a better memory than I do. Of course, that may well be the case. Almost anyone does.

Luckily, there are some excellent guides available. This is the best I've seen. I would strongly advising reading through it before embarassing yourself. I didn't but I think I got away with it. No, I definitely got away with it. I didn't do anything dumb. Still, I would have been a good deal more comfortable if I'd known what I was doing, so the point stands.

I was lucky my first run in that the Commander had a squad message up that detailed the basic mechanics for each boss. Plus I got the easy one first time, even though I was in Lane Two, because the people in Lane One couldn't even manage to kill theirs, even though it was the easiest boss. It passed to us and we killed it for them! Go us!

The next two lanes also killed theirs but after that it was fail time for everyone, and we wiped. Second time around we did even worse and then I had to go to bed. It was a great introduction all the same.

This evening I did the public version which is in some ways easier (you can have more people - the limit is 75 rather than 50, I believe) and in some ways harder (you can't vet who comes and you get quite a few lollygaggers and layabouts). We did brilliantly.

The first four lanes cut the chains. I was in Lane Two and my platform was last to get our kill, mostly because the guy I was with took a while to learn we needed to kite the boss over the mines. He got the hang of it after I yelled at him, though.

Lane five failed, which wasn't a shock because the fifth boss is the hardest. Lane One, on their reprise, took him down. Not a single lane let too many mobs through and we finished with the aethercannon still only 25% charged from that single failure. Even back in the day that would have been counted a very solid run. 

Although the exact details of what to do are quite complex, the basics are simple:

Get organized. If no-one else is stepping up then maybe think about doing it yourself.

Have 10-15 people per lane, depending on whether you have 50 or 75 in total.

When your lane is up, kill all the mobs as fast as possible to get the portal open.

Run in fast. It's really embarassing to get locked outside and watch your team fail because you were late.

Kill the boss on your platform using the correct tactics as outlined in the guide linked above or as explained by your Commander, assuming they know what they're doing.

If the idiot on your platform is doing it wrong do yell at them but also tell them how to do it properly!

All the times it's not your turn, concentrate on holding the line. Use all the available tools (barricades, golems, repair hammers) plus all your snares, roots, stuns, knockbacks and so on to make absolutely certain none of the giant twisted clockworks get to the portal. If even a few make it your lane will fail and the aethercannon will charge up some more. You do not want that gun to fire. It will kill everyone. Literally everyone.

If a lane calls out for help (usually when their turn comes around again after a fail and they realize half of their people already left) do not go charging over to help until you are asked! It's really embarassing when the whole thing fails because everyone in one lane went to help another lane and left one poor guy trying to stop a hundred twisted clockworks on his own.

If you win, jump up and down and cheer like crazy. Or just grab your loot and leave. You do you.

 

I cheered. Then I grabbed my loot. Most of it was the usual nonsense but there's two gold for the first time you do it that day (Maybe. Or maybe it's just the first time ever. Honestly, I didn't check. I'm not doing it for the money.) 

There's a fairly nice set of weapon skins to collect if you're into that sort of thing. Mostly, though, it's about the fun. Marionette is a really well-designed event and I'll tell you why: it's because it keeps everyone engaged from start to finish and makes everyone feel invested in everyone else's success. It's a true mmorpg experience that could not be replicated in a single-player game.

All five lanes have to be held. All five bosses have to die. All five chains have to be severed. Every success is everyone's success. Every failure is everyone's failure. It's a true team effort.

I loved it. I'm just writing this up in the time between the last public run and the next. The private squad version is good but the public one is the real thing. 

I just wish it was staying for longer than a week.

A Compilation Of Links To Useful EverQuest Guides, Hints, Tips and Resources: Updated for 2018

I have a feeling I did this once before but if I did, I can't find the post. Never mind. I've stumbled across a few more resources since then anyway, so I think it's worth taking another run at it. The caveat is always Check The Date. Some of the information, even from recommended and reliable sources, can be outmoded or just plain obsolete. If in doubt, log in and try it. It won't kill you. Probably.

An awful lot of the things any EQ player would be better off knowing are buried somewhere in these links. Best of luck digging them out. If you can't find what you need, the best possible advice I can give is start playing and "just ask". Someone probably knows and if there's one thing EQ players enjoy even more than a double XP weekend it's a chance to show off their superior knowledge of the game.

Here are the links:



Almar's Guides

Fanra's Everquest Wiki incorporating Rasper's Repository

Allakhazam (especially the Wiki/Database)

EQ Traders

Brewall's EverQuest Maps

EQ Resource

Paul Lynch's EverQuest Guides inluding Pet Focuses and All The Good Quests

Hazmil Skelyd's EverQuest Resource Page

Pak'Cafan: EverQuest

EQ Interface

EQ Official Forums (especially the Returning Player Mage Thread for anyone starting a Heroic Character at Level 85).

EverQuest Reddit



And now, the gloss:

The reason I'm revisiting this topic is that there seems to have been a slight uptick of interest in playing EverQuest lately. Not just from me, either. UltrViolet tried it and didn't like it. Belghast just rolled an SK on Vox to see if recent negative comparisons with Project : Gorgon were justified. Keen has been  running out of partners while playing on Coirnav and although Kaozz hasn't mentioned it recently she's always there or thereabouts.

I've even had the odd comment asking for advice on starting or returning to EQ. I'm not sure that's something I'd advocate to just anyone. As has been discussed many times, MMORPGs come with a significant learning curve even when they're new and that curve can turn into a cliff face when the game's been running successfully for a few years, let alone nearly two decades.

Without any doubt, the single most forbidding aspect of playing EverQuest these days is the sheer volume of hidden detail. The gameplay itself remains relatively simple but the systems that support it are mysterious, arcane, convoluted and very frequently almost entirely obscure.

Over the years the developers, be it SOE or DBG, have made heroic efforts to retro-fit modern MMO conveniences onto the aging chassis, with varying degrees of success. For example, in my opinion, EQ currently has the best loot system of any game I play. It allows a degree of control that other MMOs either simply don't offer or, if they do, lock behind achievement or pay walls.

EQ long ago added a quest journal and quest tracker that offers all the utility you'd expect. It's far superior to GW2's kludgy version. There's a fantastic Atlas facility that not only shows you every one of the hundreds of zones but will build a path for you from anywhere to anywhere else and provide you with a glowing trail that shows you how to get you there.

The game even has a Calendar to let you know you when holiday or special events are coming. Hardly anyone seems to know it exists. Almost every day while I'm playing, someone will ask when an event begins or ends, only to be told to type /calendar. The response is usually "Wow! I never knew that even existed!".

I pick up most of of my tips from chat channels. That's how I discovered I could buy and sell through the Bazaar without having to go there. Yesterday I learned that you can control which spells and abilities your Mercenary uses by means of the /blockspell command or its menu-driven equivalent.

This is so counter-intuitive as to be positively perverse. Here's a detailed explanation. The way you can affect the behavior of your NPC Mercenary in this fashion is potentially game-changing, allowing you to solo (or, as the jargon has it, Molo) content that was previously out of your reach. I have no idea how you would ever discover this exceptionally useful function unless someone told you about it or you deliberately set out to read everything you could possibly find about the game before you started.

These are just a few examples of the scores of time-saving, ease of access, user-friendly systems available, many of which effectively change the way you might approach the entire game. And that's just the options open to everyone.

Once you begin to consider the range of Alternative Abilities you need to level up (around 10,000 of them according to Almar) I shudder to think how many more wrinkles there must be that I don't yet know. EQ doesn't go out of it's way to tell you about any of this. You have to find most of it for yourself. It's scarcely exaggerating to say that I discover a new trick every time I play, although sometimes they're tricks I used to know but long ago forgot.

Bearing all that in mind, there are several ways you could set about playing such a well-established MMORPG, one that hides 90% of its essential systems beneath the surface. You could take the "sink or swim" approach, treat it like any new game and just jump in. You'll probably sink but, hey...YOLO, right?

You could find a friend who plays and get them to handhold you through the scary parts. If you don't have such a long-suffering friend on tap, you could - as I have seen many players do - begin your new adventure by spamming chat for an active guild. Might take a while.

Or you could do some research. Every long-running game that was ever any kind of success has a legacy of guides, databases, wikis, Add-Ons and discussions that point back into the deep past like a comet's tail. The problem is, for good or ill, MMORPGs define themeselves by perpetual change. The issue isn't finding information - it's finding accurate information that's still relevant.

Still, it was ever thus. And it's not like games come with a manual any more, is it? Not that most people ever read the dam' thing back when they did... 

Known Unknowns : EverQuest

This morning, purely by chance, I happened upon a surprising resource for EverQuest that was entirely new to me. It happened as I was replying to a comment by Shintar on yesterday's post.

I was googling exactly when the Mines of Gloomingdeep tutorial was introduced to EQ. I didn't get the answer I wanted but one of the results pointed me to a website called Almar's Guides.

Now, I admit at this point that it's entirely possible I've mentioned Almar and his guides before. My memory isn't what it was and it was never all that to begin with. I do seem to have some very vague recollection of posting some list of EQ resources but if I did I can't find it. I'm probably thinking of EQ2.

Regardless, it's an astonishingly detailed and useful collection of pages, full of very helpful information, clearly laid out and very well explained. If I mentioned it before I don't apologize for mentioning it again. It includes exceptionally detailed guides on how and where to level dependent on which expansions you have, whether you play solo, on regular or progression servers, with a mercenary or if, as so many do, you multibox.

I dipped into the multiboxing guides, which are extensive and somewhat daunting. Like most EQ players I have at one time or another at least dabbled with playing several characters at once. The complexity of the process has always put me off taking it up as a serious playstyle but if I was ever going to try I'd begin here.

As I browsed Almar's site I was scarcely able to believe that such a well-maintained and current resource could exist for a game fast approaching its nineteenth anniversary. The dedication and enterprise of players like Almar and Yeebo, who recently put up an excellent suite of guides for the almost equally ancient Dark Age of Camelot, deserves the highest praise and respect.

This is a cutaway of the center of my screen in EQ2. The four long hotbars are all in-combat abilities. I use most of them on cooldown in every fight that lasts long enough. To each side are ones I use more rarely along with some auto-populated stuff I haven't removed yet and the Ascended abilities that have very long cooldowns. If I included the full screen it would show three more hotbars for a grand total of ten, which is the maximum allowed. If I could have more I would!

It also inspires another kind of awe. Reading Almar I was struck once again by how ferociously complex and intimidating MMORPGs can be. Those of us who play them regularly and have done for a while hardly have any sense of the vast ocean of mystery that lies below the surface of almost every MMO.

For example, consider the making of Macros in EverQuest. I've know how to do this since somewhere around the turn of the century and I do use a few when I play but it's clear from reading this guide that I have barely begun to scratch the surface of what they can do. Most MMOs have systems and subsystems that are capable of radically restructuring the entire experience and yet how many of us understand them, let alone use them to the fullest?

It's not just the complex machinery under the hood that goes unremarked. Even simple, surface staples of gameplay like spell rotations or the efficient use of consumables go largely unreported. We all write and talk at considerable length about so many aspects of the virtual worlds we inhabit, from the way our characters look to the inconsistencies in the lore that lies behind the narratives they follow, but we rarely discuss in any detail the straightforward mechanics of how we go about playing the "game".

Indeed, as I can attest from just the few entries on Almar's site that I scanned, and as has come up many times in conversation on this and other blogs only in the last few weeks and months, there are often very basic elements that simply pass us by, either ignored or unnoticed. How often does the supposed difficulty, awkwardness or poor design of an MMO mask an unwillingness on the part of the player to engage fully with the mechanics required to make that "difficulty" go away? Do we even take the trouble to find out that such mechanics exist, let alone practice and master them?

Given that few of us are slow in pointing out the problems when they arise, it's all the more surprising that we discuss the fine details of the solutions so rarely. Perhaps, in a fashion, we feel that to do so would detract from the necessary illusion many of us try to maintain; that we live in another world which is, in some sense, true. There's a trick we have perfected of seeing one thing while doing another. No-one wants to draw too much attention the props and wires that make the trick work.

The deceptively simple center screen as seen by my Elementalist in GW2. Compared to EQ or EQ2 there's far less clutter but as the pop-up tool-tip shows there's plenty going on behind the scenes. GW2 relies much more than other MMOs I play on invisible synergies that have to be committed to memory. Or blind luck. Guess which I rely on.

At a meta-level, it's fine to lay out tactics and strategies. Many of us love to examine the greater structures, to elaborate on the design and approach that each game developer takes in making a world. All of that is fair game, along with any number of treatises on the interface between art and commerce.

It's a lot rarer to see posts that elaborate on the fine detail. How, exactly, we control the movement and action of our characters. What marks the precise outline of their capacity to interact with their environment. There aren't a great many people posting instructions on exactly which button to press when. Certainly I'm not about to start doing it.

Perhaps to do so seems to risk breaking the thin bubble that holds back reality. Or maybe it's just not as exciting to write about that when we could be gushing over what our characters are wearing or speculating about the latest industry blow-up.

The information is out there if we search for it. It's the preserve of analytical websites like Icy Veins or MetaBattle, places where all that matters is the "what" and the "how". To step through such a portal is to admit that what happens when we play is at the same time both far more complex and much more codified than we may care to admit.

All of which is just a way of admitting how little I still know. Mostly I think it doesn't matter but how can I be sure? I float along on my little island, enjoying the scenery but sometimes I catch a glimpse of the vast iceberg stretching away beneath me and I get a shiver down my spine.

Finding Almar's Guides gave me the chills.

The Solo Player's Guide To GW2 World Vs World Dailies

Reading the frustrated reports of very experienced, skilled gamers like Aywren, UltrViolet and most recently Azuriel amply demonstrates just how badly GW2 introduces and explains key gameplay elements to new or returning players.

One thing that should be very simple are the three "dailies" required to gain the rather generous stipend of two gold pieces that most new or returning players would really like to slip into their virtual wallet each day. Back in the mists of time you would get your dailies just for playing the game but those days are long, long gone.

Dailies come in three types, one for each of the major silos of the game: PvE, PvP and WvW. You can mix and match any three dailies from any of the categories but most new or returning players focus their attention on PvE.

Once, that made sense. You used to be able to do your PvE dailies anywhere and there were plenty of them. Not any more. Nowadays you get your dailies based on the highest level character on your account and the expansions you have purchased and you get told which map to do them in.

This is awkward enough even on a first character leveling up. For anyone who has taken a short-cut to endgame, either by using one of the Level 80 boosts that came with an expansion or by means of one of the in-game boosters such as Tomes of knowledge, it can be disastrous.

With a fresh level 80 you risk getting dailies in maps you have never visited and can't easily access. You may be asked to complete "Adventures", which most players avoid like the plague. You may be asked to kill Champions in a group event or World Bosses you've never even heard of.

Don't despair. World vs World will rescue you.

World vs World has a very small range of dailies and they are almost all very easy. Most of them are also very quick. Everyone can access all the WvW maps (F2P players need to be Level 60) and even if you don't have a Level 80 you will be bumped up to play as though you did.

But it's PvP, isn't it? I'll get ganked before I can do anything!

No you won't. Many of the WvW dailies can be done with a very high degree of safety at very low risk. Chances are you won't see, let alone fight, an enemy player. What's more, with the current low level of interest in WvW, it's even less likely than ever that you'll bump into anyone. Depending on your World and the time zone in which you play you may not see anyone at all!

Enough pre-amble: what about the dailies? Here's the list from the Wiki, with my - hopefully helpful - comments. I've also given them a star rating based on a combination of ease, speed and safety. The more stars the better. And I even made some maps!


***** Big Spender

Spend at least 25 Badges of Honor.

This daily takes seconds to do and is guaranteed 100% safe. If you do WvW you'll have more of these than you know what to do with but if you don't you may still have plenty. You get a hundred in every Achievement chest and once you start doing WvW dailies you'll get some more for every one you do.

The simplest way to do this daily is to buy two Traps from the Tricks and Traps vendor. They cost 15 badges each and they stack. There's a T&T vendor at every spawn-in and at your home Borderland Citadel.


*** Caravan Disruptor
Destroy a supply caravan.

A "supply caravan" is a Dolyak. They spawn at every supply camp and walk (or run) to towers and keeps. If there's no friendly structure for them to supply they just stand in the camp and chew the cud. You can see them on the map - they are the little icon that looks like a Dolyak (surprise surprise).

If they are in transit they don't fight back but they will defend themselves if they're still in the camp. The safest option is to use the map to locate a camp your team doesn't own but which is next to a waypoint you can use (you may need to visit the WPs once to open them if you have never been to that map before, same as PvE). Several of the camps on Desert Borderland are structured so you can get to the yaks in camp without aggroing any guards. The northern camp just behind Citadel is particularly good for that, with four yaks in a stable under the raised platform.

Wait somewhere safe until a yak leaves the camp and then jump it once it's out of range of the guards. Or pick one that's on a lonely stretch of its route. If the camp is upgraded (has two or three shields over the camp icon on the map) the Dolyak may have NPC guards so an unupgraded camp is easiest. Camps change hands all the time so finding a weak camp is not usually a problem.

Dolyaks are robust and take a while to kill but usually you will have plenty of time. If you are unlucky enough to be interrupted by an enemy player just keep killing the yak. If you die and the other player kills the yak you will still get credit for the daily. Dying in WvW costs you absolutely nothing other than a few seconds of your time so just let it happen - unless you think you can win, of course!


* Invasion Defender 
Kill three enemy players.

Avoid this unless you are going to join a squad and/or run with the zerg. If you're even considering getting your daily by killing other players solo you certainly don't need any help from me!


**** Land Claimer
Capture a sentry point. 
 
This is very easy and very low risk. Sentries are marked on the map by a flag icon. There are plenty of them and one or two can be seen and checked for safety from places where you yourself are invulnerable to attack. Many others are in places few players pass by regularly.

Possibly the easiest to get to quickly and safely is the one on the junction of the road between the north-west gate of Garrison and Dreadfall Bay. You can see that sentry from the safety of the platform above "Water Gate" at Garrison to check there are no enemies nearby.

Whichever sentry you pick will be a Veteran but they are veterans in name only. They die in a few hits. When you've killed the sentry, stand in the ring that pops until it fills. It only takes a few seconds. Daily done, waypoint to safety!


***** Master of Monuments  

Capture a shrine (Desert Borderlands) or a ruin (Alpine Borderlands).
 
(Wiki is out of date here. The Desert BL also requires "ruins" nowadays, not shrines, which are different places altogether).

This involves no combat at all. Just stand on a marked spot for around 60 seconds while a ring completes. The relevant spots are all clearly marked on your in-game map. They're all in the central area, which is the least-trafficked part.

If your team owns three out of five then on the map all five will be filled in with the color of your world. Ignore that. It means your side has Bloodlust and it was made to work that way when gliding was added to WvW, so that your glider could use the entire area.

What you need to do is check the spots visually, not via the map. You're looking for one that is at least partially uncolored on the ground. You can see two of them from the safety of the Alpine Garrison water gate (one from the Desert BL Garrison/Earth Keep equivalent). Pick one, run to it (or glide, if you have gliding opened for WvW) then stand looking around nervously for a minute while the ring fills.  Daily done!


*** Guard Killer 
Kill five veteran or higher NPC guards.

This is very manageable although it is potentially risky. I would recommend avoiding Desert Borderland; the guards there seem to be tougher. All guards count, at camps, towers or keeps. Sentries also count as does the Quartermaster in a camp even though he's not a Veteran. "Flavor" NPCs like Citizens or Soldiers at North Camp don't count.

This is another daily where it's important not to worry about being ganked. So long as the guard dies and you did enough damage you'll get credit even if another player butts in and kills you. Worst case scenario is that you're interrupted by a player on the same team as the guard you're trying to kill, which means the guard will live and you won't get anything. That hardly ever happens in my experience so long as you avoid busy areas.

**** Veteran Creature Slayer
Defeat the veteran warg, the harpy veteran, or the veteran wurm on a Borderlands map. 

Very easy and very safe and very quick, so long as your creature of choice is up. If you have a waypoint open at Dreadfall Bay the Wurm on Alpine is probably the easiest to get to but the Warg on the enemy Alpine BL where you have the south-west spawn point is even safer. The Harpy is, in my opinion, both the toughest and the most awkward to reach on Alpine but compared to most PvE content they are all easy solo kills.

The Wurm on Desert BL is very easy to find once you know where it is (see my map above) and so is the Warg but they do require some travel across exposed ground so there is an element of risk. I wouldn't even consider the Harpy on Desert BL because of how awkward it is to reach.

Often you won't have to solo the Veteran Creature, though. They are a ten minute spawn and if the one you've picked isn't up you will frequently find someone on your team already waiting for it. I have even waited with people from the enemy team, killed the creature (carefully avoiding using any AEs), bowed and left without a fight.

** Camp Capturer
Capture two camps.
 

This is a lot of fun but very high risk compared to most of the dailies above. Camps, as I said, change hands all the time and scouts (players watching the map) will report any activity if they're doing their job properly. Whether anyone responds is another matter but it takes some time to clear and take a camp solo - two or three minutes - and that's a long time to stand in enemy territory with a sign over your head.

On the other hand, it's every bit as likely that you'll be joined by someone on your own side, particularly if you are re-taking a camp on your own borderland. Most teams don't like to leave their camps in enemy hands. Once a camp is taken it cannot be re-taken for five minutes and you can see the timer for any camp by mousing over the icon on the map.

If you go to such a camp (particularly North Camp, which is also the easiest, safest and quickest to get to) just before the timer expires there's a very good chance others from your World will already be there, waiting to retake. Also, so long as you've killed any guard at the camp, you will get credit if that camp changes hands to your side at any time before you leave the map so it can be worth just popping a guard in passing if you plan to be there a while.

If you happen to be in a match or on a team where certain maps or areas are rarely visited, taking camps for dailies can be both enjoyable and useful for learning WvW and gaining confidence. Some teams don't seem to like playing on Desert Borderland and the southern camps there are often very quiet. I spent a lot of time re-learning and practicing my old EQ pulling techniques in the southern desert on my Ranger while I was leveling up.

* Keep Capturer
Capture a keep.

Totally out of the question unless you join a zerg or squad or have the good timing to run into the keep just as your team is about to take it. Actually, keeps can be soloed. We have someone on Yak's Bend who does it for his own amusement. If you can do that you should be writing guides not reading them.

* Tower Capturer
Capture a tower.

Same as Keep. Ignore this one unless you're planing on joining a squad or zerg. Although technically easier to solo than a Keep I've never soloed one successfully. Mrs Bhagpuss has though. A few times.

**** Objective Defender
Defend an objective during an enemy assault. The achievement is rewarded when a defend event successfully completes.

Now this is a very easy daily that's often overlooked. "Defending" sounds like it means fighting but it also includes repairing. Mrs Bhagpuss does this one a lot. She just looks on the map to find a keep or tower that we own that looks "contested", which shows as crossed swords over the icon. Then she goes there and looks for a damaged wall or gate and repairs it.

Structures check their integrity every couple of minutes and when that tick passes anyone who's contributed to defence, either by killing an enemy player or repairing the structure, gets credit.

There you go. Dailies all done!