Let's Go To The Moon: EQII

With all the focus on WoW Classic I still managed to find an hour to run through some of the pre-expansion quests in EverQuest II yesterday. There's a lot going on in EQII right now and I'm conscious of missing out. As Telwyn's finding, it would be very easy to immerse yourself in Norrath if it wasn't for all the other distractions.

I saw some grumbling on the forums about excessive timesinks, mostly concerning the number of mats that had to be gathered for some of the crafting quests. This seems to have been addressed in Tuesday's patch although the update notes don't mention  it.

That something has changed seems evident from the enormous discrepancy between the details on the wiki walkthrough I used and the actual number of mats required by the quest I was doing in the game itself.

According to the wiki, Shoot For The Stars requires

• 54 solid ethereal filament found around Teren's Grasp 
• 18 Salty Loam
• 8 Rough Turquoise
• 18 Tuber Strand
• 54 Glowing Incense 

That's to make six Astral Transposition Acceptors, six Multifaceted Transpositional Spellshards and six Quadrolith Corporeal Sublimators. Don't you wish you got paid for making this stuff up?

In the game itself, though, the quest only asks you to make the Sublimators. No mention of the rest. And to make those takes just one of each of the mats plus the regular amount of fuel.

I'm assuming the quest was changed although I guess the wiki could just be wrong. I doubt it. As I've said before, EQII has one of the very best wikis of any MMORPG I've ever played. It's comprehensive, accurate and usually has full information on new content the day it appears in game, thanks to the ever-diligent crew on the Test server. As I also said, this time the quests weren't on Test before they went Live so there was a day or two's lag before the walkthroughs appeared.

 One Deepwater Coin for every six grimlings. Seems like a bargain. I'd kill the little buggers for nothing.

Given my recent comments on how refreshing it is to be playing Classic with nothing to help me other than the information relayed by NPCs when they pass on the quests, it may seem counter-intuitive, not to say hypocritical for me to be praising another MMORPG community's ability to provide comprehensive out-of-game help but it serves to emphasize something I'm coming to believe quite strongly: there are, and should be, many different types of MMORPGs.

I've played EQII for fifteen years. When I play new, low level characters there I still enjoy all the same running and exploring and detective work that so appeals to me in WoW Classic. When I play my max-level character, however, all that changes.

My Berserker is powerful and experienced. I don't get anything like the same satisfaction from spending 30-60 minutes taking him running and searching across a large zone, in which nothing is a threat, hunting for three or four small ground items that an NPC has helpfully told me are "somewhere" in the region. It's annoying and not fun.

In these cases I want to see the new content and gain whatever rewards it gives, not spend literally hours nit-picking through zones I know like the back of my hand. For the same reason, in EQII I absolutely love my flying mounts (or wings, as I prefer to use), not just for the sheer thrill of feeling like I can fly but also for the huge timesaving they provide.

That highlight isn't exactly giving much away, is it?

Equally, I love the unlimited Instant Travel available free for subscribers. I love being able to open the map, click on my destination and be there in as long as it takes for a loading screen to clear. I also do just about every new quest with the wiki's detailed and comprehensive walkthrough open on a Firefox tab.

I don't find these positions in any way mutually exclusive. These are different games but also different stages with in the life of those games. What is appropriate for one isn't necessarily appropriate for another.

And, of course, it's also a choice. If I wanted, I could play EQII just how I'm playing Classic. Only I don't want to and that's perfectly fine. We are allowed to want different things and we are allowed to change our minds. And change them again. As often as we like.

In this vein, I was interested to see that, for the pre-expansion quests, the map once again highlights the general area where you need to go. This feature was, somewhat controversially, removed in an expansion a few years ago (from memory I think it was Kunark Ascending), at least for new content. I remember Kaozz from ECTMMO being particularly annoyed about it and she wasn't alone.

Since then it seems to have crept back in. I'm not clear any more on what the official policy is, if indeed there is one, but I'd be very happy to have it re-instated as standard.

Using the walkthroughs, Instant Travel, flying and the map highlights I was able to knock out most of the repeatable quests, some of them more than once, in an hour. I liked all of them. They're simple but satisfying.

Doesn't look all that grim to me.

It was particularly pleasant to be sent to the Grim Shales region in Phantom Sea. I'd forgotten how misleading the name of this place was. It's a gorgeous area of natural woodland. I took tourist photos as I flew around picking up shards of Luclinite and smashing runestones.

You never have the chance to appreciate the scenery when you do this stuff at level, I find. Too busy trying to stay alive. It's always a revelation to return a few levels later and realize how much you missed.

I collected 22 Deepwater Coins and browsed the vendor. There was such a great choice (and most of it very cheap) that I couldn't decide where to start buying. Instead I resolved to spend a good few more hours doing repeatables over the next couple of months so I can have everything I fancy. I particularly want the hover platform which, at 50 coins, is the most expensive item in the catalog.

As yet I haven't touched the permanent quests. Those will require proper attention and a block of time. I'll get to it in due course, I'm sure. Before the expansion, I hope, but if not sometime later, by which time the extra ten levels and gear upgrades will no doubt have reduced the difficulty considerably.

Speaking of the expansion, I am now all but certain we're going to Luclin. As someone on the forums pointed out, one of the released PR shots is clearly The Nexus as remodelled by the Shissar. The excitement and enthusiasm for a return to the moon is already building.

Could be a great expansion. Here's hoping!

Passage To Luclin? : EQII

As if I didn't already have enough to do, yesterday EverQuest II dropped the pre-event package for this year's as-yet unannounced expansion. Enigmatically entitled "Mythic Passage", there's a whole boatload of repeatable quests, all of which run until the yet-to-be finalized released date of the yet-to-be named expansion. Probably late November at a guess.

There are quests, and a collection, to suit all levels:

3 all level adventure repeatable quests (prelude only)
2 all level tradeskill repeatable quests (prelude only)
1 collection (prelude only)

There are also four permanent, one-time quests, for which you need to be Level 110. Those stay in the game after the expansion launches.

2 level 110 adventure signature quests (permanentcontent!)
2 level 110 tradeskill signature quests (permanent content!)

As far as I can tell, you have to get the repeatable quests from Teren's Grasp, the city in Kylong Plains, which is a Level 60-70 zone. Although the press release claims, corrctly, "There's something everyone can do, no matter how experienced!" you presumably do have to be able to get to the questgivers to make a start.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Just let me get on with it.

I wouldn't fancy the chances of anyone under level 55 or so making the run from the docks. If you're subbed, of course, it's not a problem. You can use the invaluable Instant Travel option (almost worth the price of the sub on its own), which will land you right on top of the questgivers, who are all standing round the Combine Spires where you arrive.

Free to Play accounts can buy an Instant Port to any destination for the very affordable price of 49SC per trip. It would certainly be worth it if you want to get there in one piece. It's also completely safe to fly there, so if you picked up any of the Event Mounts that fly at low levels, now's the time to use them.

There was some talk a while back about some of these mounts having been nerfed so as not to fly at very low levels but I haven't been able to confirm any details. I believe at least some of them still function as they always did. I have checked, however, to see whether Free to Play players can get the quests and yes they definitely can, the repeatables at least. I don't have a Max Level F2P character to check the permanent ones but I'm guessing that's also true.

The permanent quests are flagged up to any Level 110 as soon as they log in via in-game mail:

"Maximum experienced players receive a summons in the mail requesting their presence in The Duality's Vigilant Sanctum, once more. Inside, the adventuring level 110 players can speak with the Duality, and the tradeskill level 110 players can speak with Head Scholar Nabihan to learn how they might lend their skills to the situation.

I've taken the first two permanent quests. They presumably each have a follow-on on completion to make four. I haven't started either as yet. The Adventure quest is flagged for group play which is ominous. The reward is a major upgrade to my pretty good max level solo gear so I imagine it is a genuine Heroic. Won't be soloing that, or at least not until after the expansion gives me another ten levels and invalidates all the gear I'm wearing anyway!

Want! Want!

Tradeskill quests are always soloable, though, and that also has a solid upgrade reward, so I'll be doing that at some point. With my WoW Classic refresher course in how to talk to people and get groups I might end up doing all of the four quests. They certainly look to be very well worth it.

I did make an attempt to start a couple of the repeatables. I thought it would be easy. One asked me to kill some at-level mobs that the text suggested would spawn around Combine Spires. The other wanted me to pick up something that would spawn in the same sort of place.

EQII often uses this scenario for all-level quests because the spires are easy for anyone to get to. I'm very familiar with how it works. No specific spires were mentioned but in a quick search of three or four zones I couldn't find anything.

As far as I can ascertain,  none of this content was on the Test Server before it went Live. It's from the invaluable work of the dedicated Test community that all the pre-Live research that goes into the excellent guides and walkthroughs on the Wiki and other sites derive.

As I commented on Everwake's post on the topic yesterday, in some games I use no outside aids at all whereas in others I rely on them explicitly. EQII has been a walkthrough game for me for years. Many of the quests are intricate and fiddly and require searching large areas with little information, looking for very small objects that aren't easy to see. You'd go insane trying to do that every time so I let the hivemind do the grunt work.

I didn't think I'd need a guide for these but apparently I do. Nothing's up yet so I'll have to wait a while. I'd like to do a few of the repeatables because the items for sale at the vendor (the quests, as usual, reward a special event currency accepted by a specific NPC) are rather nice. As always, they are all decorating or appearance items. I particularly like the look of some of the pets and the Elemental outfits. The flying disc is good, too. I do like my particle effects.

Yes, but are we playing them Home or Away?

Perhaps the most interesting - indeed exciting - aspect of the Mythic Passage pre-events doesn't come from any of the rewards or the quests themselves. It's in the subtext. And, indeed, the text.

Most of the questgivers talk about races and creatures associated most strongly with the once-shattered, now restored, moon, Luclin. The last expansion, Chaos Descending, ended (spoiler alert!) with the defeat of Najena. Her parting words were a warning that by defeating her we'd opened Norrath up to a greater threat from the ancient race of snake-people, the Shissar.

The Shissar came from Kunark originally but were driven from Norrath by The Greenmist. They retreated to their last citadel, The Shissar Temple in Luclin's airless zone, The Grey. The lore pertaining to all of this has underpinned the last five expansions. We've seen two races appear on Norrath that were previously only known on Luclin, The Akheva and The Grimlings.

The lore in the Everquest franchise is deep, layered and rich. It's also elusive and veiled. Of all the MMORPGs I've played, the EQ games seem the happiest to play an exceedingly long game, with timelines that stretch not just across years but decades. Many EQII players have been hoping for (or dreading) a return to Luclin ever since the moon was destroyed off camera before launch.

This time I think it might actually happen. I really, really hope it does!