They Don't Call It A Sweatshop For Nothing

Naturally, the moment I post in praise of Daybreak's engineering team, they break something. When I went to log into EverQuest II yesterday, the launcher didn't work. I found a workaround on the forums so it wasn't a serious problem. Then there was a patch and after that I didn't have a problem at all.

Until I logged in again today and found the launcher didn't work. Again. 

The same workaround did, though, so I was able to take a look at the new, improved Summer Jubilee version of Scorched Sky Celebration, which I realize I've been referring to as "Scorched Sky" or even "Scorched Skies" all this time, without the "Celebration", which is actually part of the name. Must pay more attention.

I read the news item and rushed off to Sinking Sands to get the new quest. Someone at the bonfire in Buccaneer Bay had a feather over their head so I chatted with them for a bit, took their quest, set off to kill some Scorched Sky elementals and then realised I was doing last year's new quest, which I wrote about back in 2021. At least I noticed before I'd really got going!

 Re-reading the news item, I spotted this key line: "The most advanced adventurers with a penchant for all things toasty warm can head to The Highlands in Butcherblock Mountains to find your path." Granted it's a bit flowery but I can't say I wasn't told. Must pay more attention. No, really, I must.

I'm a little unclear as to the connection between Butcherblock Highlands and the searing heat of summer. It's a pretty cold and unsummery place as far as I can see. There's a party of celebrants there all the same, including Chandrima, the questgiver, who I have a feeling may also be one of my Overseer agents. Or maybe I'm imagining that.

She explained the situation and sent me to get some Flaming Runes of Ro. After I'd popped the requisite number of Scorched Sky elementals, of which there were plenty within a shuriken's throw of the camp, it was off to another unlikely venue for the Scorched Sky Celebration, namely Dropship Landing in the Moors of Ykesha. 

This time there is a lore-appopriate reason to go there, despite the complete absence of sunshine, volcanos or deserts. It's where we went for Tinkerfest and the new portal uses the same "celestial apperture creator" as last time, handily still poking out of the ground where we left it. I imagine we'll be back there again in August for Oceansfull. 

I got the portal up and stepped through. I was playing my Bruiser this time. He's now my best-equipped character and he does a lot more DPS than the berserker, while being almost as tanky. Plus he has Feign Death, the Pause Button of mmorpgs.

Inside the zone, Doomfire Ro's Sweatshop, I found another questgiver waiting. I picked up his quest, which I found to be both nicely phrased and rather intriguing. There's been some speculation on the forums about whther the new hires at Darkpaw have been given the new summer quests to work on and I wouldn't be surprised if there's something in that. The new quests are very much in the standard EQII mode but there seems to be a freshness and an enthusiasm about the dialog that suggests whoever's writing them is really enjoying themselves.

I began pulling. Most of the mobs came in gangs of three or more but they posed little threat to my Bruiser, who chopped them down in seconds. The quest items came from boxes on the ground but naturally the owners of said boxes objected to them being rifled through by passing strangers so we came to blows. 

The drop rate was good and it didn't take long before I had everything. did the hand-in and got the pattern I was after, along with some directions and a word of advice. When I turned around and headed towards place I'd been told to go next, I found a horseman named Elemy Elmonnier in my way; the first boss.

He had a couple of tricks, one of which seemed to be the power to summon an unlimited number of guards to his side. The other was to have his horse trample me. 

According to the walkthrough, which I didn't look at until after I'd killed him, I should have backed off to avoid getting trampled. It doesn't mention the guards at all. I just stood there and face-tanked him and AE-ed the guards and that seemed to work.

The loot he dropped was nice for a solo character. Two pieces of Fabled gear, 305 Resolve, and an Adept spell book. The neck slot item was a good upgrade. I was going to carry on to the next boss but before I could spawn him, Beryl the dog woke up and came to tell me she wanted to play so that was that.

I really like these new instances, the Tinkerfest one and now what I've seen of this. The stories are fun, the difficulty level is just about right, the gameplay is enjoyable and the drops are worthwhile. I'm usually pretty happy with EQII's questing and the holiday content has always been some of the best in the genre but these have been noticeably above par. I do think the current team has upped their game significantly of late.

Beryl permitting, I hope to finish the instance tomorrow. I doubt I'm going to find the time to run it half a dozen times before the event ends to get the bracers I didn't get during Tinkerfest. I'll be happy enough with the rewards from the questline and the bosses.

After that, roll on Oceansfull!

You Wait All Year For One Scorched Sky And Then Two Come Along At Once

Even though I have EverQuest News in Feedly, the first I knew about the appearance of Scorched Sky in old Norrath was when I read this post at MassivelyOP. Once I'd decoded Eliot's attempts at humor (I know, I know - pots, kettles, glass houses...) I worked out that, once again, time has been working backwards and a holiday introduced in EverQuest II has somehow made its way back half a millenium.

EQII's own Scorched Sky celebrations, now part of the Summer Extravaganza (A better name than Summer Jubilee, I think, Daybreak. Feel free to change it. I won't even ask for a credit.) begin tomorrow. I'm looking forward to seeing what's new. I was impressed with the additions to Tinkerfest earlier in the month, even if I never did find the time to go back and run the dungeon the required half dozen times.

As it happens, only yesterday as I was writing about EQ2II's 64-bit upgrade, I was thinking about taking another run at the elder game. It's about time. It's been ages since I last played. We've had a new expansion and a level increase since then. 

As I've complained many times, for historical reasons involving ineptitude and lack of foresight, my EQ Magician, far and away my best-equipped, best prepared and highest level character, is on an account for which I don't currently have All Access membership. Otherwise, I would have bought the most recent expansion, Terror of Luclin, just to be able to level up to 120. Every time there's a level cap increase I get a renewed interest in the game that lasts a couple of months so it would definitely have been worth it.

It would be nuts to buy the expansion and not subscribe, though. If I'd done that I'd have ended up paying for two All Access subscriptions and using one each for EQ and EQII, the dictionary definition of insanity. Fortunately, DBG have long followed a very sensible and generous policy of adding each expansion to the Free to Play offer once two more have followed. 2019's Torment of Velious went F2P earlier this month. I just have to wait until 2024 for ToL to join it.

Or I could just get on with gearing up my Necromancer on the All Access account. I was doing that last year or was it the year before? A Necro might suit me even better than the mage. Can't beat that Feign Death pause button.

The great thing about level cap increases in EverQuest is that even if you don't subscribe and therefore have no access to the extra levels, there's a powerful trickle-down effect that, unlike the Reagonomics version, actually benefits the little guy. As with most mmorpgs that have seen an update since around the turn of the millennium, much of the gear in EverQuest is either untradable (No Drop) or only tradable within the same account (Heirloom). Much but very importantly not all.

Each new expansion always brings a flurry of items to the Broker that come as significant upgrades to solo players at the level cap. I imagine they're of little interest to regular group players doing Heroic Dungeon content and it goes without saying that raiders don't bother with gear you can buy on the Bazaar. For casual scruffs like me, though, it's a welcome windfall.

There are always a few items that drop so commonly in the latest content they sell for very reasonable sums, even if prices aren't what you'd call cheap by the standards of a true casual. EQ, like many ageing mmorpgs, has long suffered from hyper-inflation. These days you're talking low six figures for just about any at-cap gear, even at the bargain basement end.

There are a few simple ways for even a very casual player to make that kind of money, luckily. I worked the Overseer system quite diligently when I was playing regularly a couple of years ago and this morning I was pleased to find I still had more than enough liquid cash to scoop up several solid upgrades for the Magician. 

Even though it's been a good while since I last played, I was happy to find the returning player learning curve very gentle. I made a couple of errors but it didn't take long before I felt comfortable enough to take the portal to Neriak and run my Mage over to Lavastorm to see what the new holiday content looked like.

I'd already started the new Scorched Sky Overseer mission while I was still in the Guild Lobby, sorting my spells and hoping for some Mass Group Buff joy for my pet. Called Season of Flame, it's a recruitment quest that gives you four event-specific Agents. According to the news release, there are six new Overseer quests for the holiday so I'm guessing the rest appear once you have the Agents.

I found the new questgiver, Carlene Snizzlefriz, a gnome, inevitably with a name like that, waiting around outside the entrance to the Temple of Solusek Ro. Alongside her was a fire goblin called Char the Brunt (Goblins can't spell). He turns up as one of the Overseer Agents but he has an actual, open-world quest too.

The gang's all here!

 

My plan was to do the new Mission, for which you need to be Level 100. My Magician is 115 and she, the pet and her mercenary are MGB'd virtually to raid level, so I thought it would be worth a try, even though going into instanced content in EverQuest when you're as rusty as I am is always a risk. Although not if you forget to do it.

It was a typical day in old Norrath, to be honest. I'd already been playing for an hour or more, just getting my spells up to code and buying the new gear. I stopped for lunch and when I came back I decided to go straight to Lavastorm. 

When I picked up the quests and began doing them, I realized both the quests and the mobs were level-appropriate to the zone, not keyed to the level of the character. I one-shotted a few mobs for the quest that required drops but everything I killed dropped nothing so I'm guessing you need to be getting xp to see the items. 

I tried the other quest, where you have to catch mobs and bring them back to the camp, but I soon ran into problems there. The net you throw over them only works when the mob is "weakened". It's pretty hard to "weaken" a level 26 rat with the kind of DPS a level 115 Magician puts out. It pretty much vaporizes.

A rat, by any other name...

 

There are ways you could do it but even if they work it's fiddly and annoying so instead I swapped to my Level 48 Druid. She's roughly the right level and she has her own transport.

Things worked out well enough. I took her to the camp and got the quests then I started on the catch-and-bring-back task. The first target was a Murp Lurp Glurp according to Char the goblin. It turned out to be a rat. 

The Murp conned grey to my Druid but had plenty enough hit points to be whittled down steadily until it was weak enough to capture. There were four more animals to catch, all with amusing goblish names,  each one tougher than the last. By the time I got to the fifth and final creature, a Steaming Stone Swirler, it was conning light blue, the standard solo target for leveling purposes.

And damned well stay there!

 

Every one of the new Scorched Sky creatures is also highly aggressive and there are plenty of them. I was treating the whole thing like a jolly until I found myself fighting a a Flappy Fast Flare and a Steaming Stone Swirler at the same time with my health dropping alarmingly. Fortunately, I've been playing druids since about January 2000 and it's like riding a bike so I soon had things under control. Even so, it's a salutary example of why even experienced players should never take Norrath for granted.

It was also a reminder of how long it takes to do anything in EverQuest. Just catching and returning five creatures, none of which was very far from the camp, took about forty minutes. All in all, since I patched up and logged in before lunch, I'd been playing for around three hours. And it's a quite tiring kind of play, too, even when it's just some low-level holiday fun.

Rarely was a quest more aptly named.

That's why I called it a day after the first quest, for which I got just over 290 plat and 3% of level 48. It was fun and I enjoyed it but there are quicker ways both to make money and xp. 

I would like to do the mission but I'm not sure whether I'll be able to fit it in before the event ends on July 10. My time is a little squeezed right now and I'd definitely want to prioritize the EQII version of Scorched Sky over this one.

I'm glad I made the effort to re-introduce myself to EQ, though. It's a game that never stales, not least because of the mechanics of the combat, something I find infinitely appealing and which I have rarely found adequately replicated anywhere else. You just have to have nothing else to do that day to enjoy it to the full.

Go Your Own Way

Much as I love snow zones, after finishing this year's Dragon Bash meta-achievement on one account and making it about halfway through on another, I was feeling a distinct urge to be somewhere warm for once. Nothing says "warmth" like a fire festival, so I traded the bitter cold of Guild Wars 2's icebound Hoelbrak for the burning desert heat of EverQuest II's Sinking Sands and headed for the beach to join in with this summer's Scorched Sky celebrations.

I knew there was a new quest and I never miss one of those. Well, I try not to, not holiday ones, anyway. I don't do them for the story so much as the rewards, which can often be well worth having. Most festive quests in EQII follow roughly the same format. They always begin with a chat with an NPC, who explains that something vaguely related to the celebrations has gone ever so slightly awry. 

Sometimes some creatures have escaped and either need to be rounded up and brought back or hunted down and killed. That happened a couple of years back. If it's not that, it's a mystery requiring some brief detective work that leads inevitably to some deserted cave system or underground ruin.

Once inside you can all but guarantee to find a scattering of dead bodies and a smattering of hostile wildlife. As the search takes you deeper you'll probably run across a barrier or two that needs to be removed and eventually you'll run your quarry to ground, at which point a fight will break out. Usually the final battle will involve some small degree of tactics and a good deal of thumping.

 

For quests of this kind you really don't need a walkthrough. Well, maybe you do. I wouldn't presume to judge. I don't. And yet I like to have one to hand all the same.

I don't know when it happened but at some point in my long EQII career I started thinking of quests not as adventures my characters are having so much as recipes I'm following. I think it probably began when I came back after a lengthy layoff and worked my way through two or three consecutive expansions in a row. It was taking long enough without having to work everything out from first principles. It seemed more than fair to follow in the footsteps of those who'd gone before.

Now I pretty much always do it except in the new expansion each year, when I do at least make a nominal attempt to play the way nature intended. Or at least the way Tunare intended. (A little Norrathian humor there...). Even then, if I find myself in any way stuck I turn immediately to the inestimable EQII Wiki, quite possibly the best and most accurate resource of it's kind I've been fortunate enough to draw on for any game.

As soon as I logged in this afternoon I went straight to the wiki to see where to go for this year's new quest and... nothing. I'd googled there using the search term "Scorched Sky EQ2" and it had landed me on the correct page but nothing seemed to have been updated since last year. It was a worrying sign.

For EQII's holiday events there's another resource that's even better: EQTraders. Niami Denmother (who thankfully seems to have recovered from her serious operation last year and is back to her usual active self) runs the tightest of ships when it comes to anything pertaining to crafts and housing and since every Norrathian holiday always comes packed with both those things she can be relied on to cover the whole event.

 

She doesn't always do walkthroughs, though. She has more than enough to do without that. I found the name of the quest (Feats of Burning Devotion) and the questgiver (Devotee Arborash) from the EQTraders Scorched Sky page and went to see if I could muddle through on my own.

Which, of course, I could. Everything went down exactly as expected. Arborash told me a tale of some nutcase who'd summoned an Efreeti from Doomfire, the Burning Lands, aka the Elemental Plane of Fire. Probably. I think. Who can keep these planes straight? 

Arborash was deeply impressed but when I asked him where I could admire this Efreeti and maybe speak to the genius who'd summoned it I was told the man, one Adherent Drasithe, had wandered off along the sands. That didn't seem like a good thing so I toddled off to look for him and maybe see if he needed a drink of water or something.

I didn't find Drasithe but I did spot a pretty obvious clue: a massive chunk of glowing lava stuck in the cliffside. As you do when you happen across a highly dangerous quasi-natural phenomenon, I went straight over and gave it a good poke, whereupon I found myself... yes, you guessed it, in a cave.

The cave had formerly been the hideout of some Samiel pirates, a smuggling crew commonly found lurking in similar crannies and crevices all over the Sinking Sands. I figured that out for myself by the way they were all lying around dead inside. 

The current occupiers turned out to be some snakes, a bunch of fire elementals and those annoying flying imp things you get all over any place where lava comes boiling out of the ground. In EverQuest they were called mephits. I forget what we call them now.

 

It was obvious what I needed to do next. Same as always: kill everything, take anything not nailed down and if I happen to spot any clues while I'm doing it, so much the better. I got to the end of the first bunch of caves (Is bunch the correct  technical term?) and ran into a portal. 

I did literally run into it, to see if it would port me anywhere, but it wouldn't. I had a bit of a think and then I noticed the two big spikes of lava-rock either side of it were clickable. So I clicked them. I can take a hint.

The portal closed down and my quest journal suggested now would be a good time to find a way past the fiery barrier I'd seen earlier. I had a sneaking suspicion I might just have done that by closing the portal and it turned out I was right.

Just past the portal I ran into my quarry, Adherent Drasithe. Again, literally. I ran up to him, intending either to congratulate him on his success or possibly slice him into small pieces if he'd been possessed by the creature he'd called into being but I didn't get close enough for either. He waved his arms and sent me flying backwards and then he yelled something and ran off, deeper into the tunnels.

I followed him, of course. There were some more elementals to dispose of along the way before I found him again, close to a portal just like the last one. He yelled at me again and turned into an Efreeti. Or maybe summoned one and vanished. I'm no magician, I don't know the form.

Makes no odds either way. You know it's just going to end in a punch-up. Which it did, although there was a bit more to it than that. It was one of those fights where the "boss" stops taking damage every so often and starts summoning minions and you have to kill those until something else happens and you can start pounding on the boss again. Seen it a thousand times.

 

I got the hang of that pretty quickly. The message I got every time a minion died, telling me the portal pillars were weakening, gave the game away, really. I whitled my way through elementals and imps until both the pillars were gone and the portal shut down, then I finished off the efreeti. At this point my journal suggested I might want to find the Adherent himself, who had to be somewhere close by.

He was. He was flat on the floor behind a rock, as dead as the Samiel pirates. I took the handy exit that had popped up from somewhere and legged it back along the beach to give Devotee Arborash the bad news. 

He seemed remarkably unphased. In fact he all but told me it was the best thing that could have happened and that Adherent Drasithe had done a marvelous thing for which he'd be richly rewarded in the afterlife. That's zealots for you.

I was more interested in being richly rewarded in this life, or at least in this virtual life. I took the eight ember coins (Four plus another four for being a subscriber. See? Subscriptions are worth it!). There was also a choice of a huge bed of embers or a replica of the Tyrant of Fire. I looked at them both in the Dressing Room. One was very impressive. One really was not. I took the Tyrant.

That got me wondering how many ember coins I had. I vaguely remembered doing the 2019 quest a few times but I also had an idea I'd bought a few odds and ends back then. I'd read there was a new mount this year, one that can fly, so I went over to the vendor to take a look.

Blimey, Charlie! Now that's a nice mount. A coal-black horse with fiery hooves and glowing eyes. I'd ride that. Although not until I do something to earn more ember coins, I won't. It costs a wopping hundred and fifty of them. The other two mounts, neither of which can fly, are a mere fifty coins apiece.

And this is the thing about holiday events. When they're well-done they can be highly motivating. Mrs Bhagpuss and I have both already put in hours at Dragon Bash because a) a lot of the events are fun and even if they aren't fun at least they're easy and b) the rewards are kinda-sorta nice. That staff I mentioned. Some fancy gloves. If I can imagine using these things then I'm quite likely to make more than a token effort to get them, even if in the end I probably won't end up using them after all.

I do want that horse. I'd quite like it for several people but I think that would be pushing it. I'll definitely get it for one character at least. You get an ember coin for killing the elementals that spawn near the festival sites and again you can double that if you're a member. I already have about fifty coins from previous years so I only need to kill fifty or so. That shouldn't take long.

Oh, and it turns out there is a full walkthrough up on the wiki after all. For some reason it isn't on the Scorched Sky page but it's there if you search by the name of the quest itself. I'm glad about that. It's always a bad sign when wikis stop getting timely updates.

Of course, if anyone wants to know how to do it, they can also just read my post. That should take about twice as long as doing the actual quest. I'll leave you to decide which would be more worthwhile.

You Can Get The Staff

Tuesday is patch day in Tyria so yesterday I was looking forward  to the next instalment of Return to Living Story. We'd wrapped up Season Two, the warm-up act for the first expansion, Heart of Thorns, and I was all set to jump straight into Season Three, about which I can remember almost nothing without some kind of artifical memory aid.

When I logged in, though, there were no free tokens in the mail. We're taking a short break between seasons, it seems. The next two episodes dropin a week's time on the 29th.

Instead, to entertain us this week we have Dragon Bash, the pinata-smashing, hologram-battling, moa-racing festival that takes place, for no reason I can think of, in Hoelbrak, the snowbound hometown of the Norns.

It makes for a nice contrast with Scorched Sky, the holiday that began the same day over in Norrath. As the dramatic note from new Community Manager Accendo puts it, "The Scorched Sky Celebration is back and within the flames, all mettle is tempered—that which is weak, distracting, and fleeting is burned away leaving only the strong, pure, and resilient! Join us in lifting up the Tyrant of Fire and the Burning Prince, and you too will know the cleansing intensity of Fire."

I haven't yet engaged with the new quest, Feats of Burning Devotion, or browsed the thirty-four new items on the Ember merchants (including a new flying mount, so I hear). I'll get around to that tomorrow or the next day.

I have, however, already started working on my necessary obligations in the Shiverpeak snows. At least I thought they were necessary when I began. It turned out I was wrong.

ArenaNet have made some concerted effort these last couple of years to fill out what was once a desultory holiday calendar and also to make the holidays themselves more interesting and fun. I usually do the dailies and some of the events in all of them but Dragon Bash has several events I always enjoy. Smashing pinatas is a bit of mindless fun and I'm always up for some rollerbeetle racing. The hologram arena is okay for a few rounds once a year but  the staged hologram invasions of the various Shiverpeaks maps are good for the whole three weeks.

The problem with most Tyrian holidays isn't usually with the entertainment so much as the presents. It's all very well doing the events to earn the currency but I can hardly ever find anything I want to spend it on. 

From that perspective, it was a very nice surprise last night when Mrs. Bhagpuss, who can be much more of a determined holidaymaker than me, linked a very attractive new staff in guild chat. Going by the seasonally inappropriate name of Spring Warmth, it's a rustic pole that bursts into flower at the business end and it's one of three new weapons for sale at a new vendor added this year.

Out of curiosity, I ported across to Hoelbrak to take a look at the other two. One is a flowery rifle that looks both unwieldy and bizarre. I don't have anyone who habitually uses a gun but even if I did I can't imagine using this one. 

The third is a warhorn which, like almost every other smallish weapon in the game, would be hard to notice in use. This one also happens to be very ordinary-looking. It's quite realistic if that's the look you're going for but I can't see it setting any hearts racing.

The staff, though, that I liked. So did Mrs Bhagpuss. The cost at the vendor was twenty Jorbreakers, the currency of Dragon Bash. There are various ways you can acquire Jorbreakers, some of them quite speedy, but Mrs. Bhagpuss calculated that by doing dailies and regular holiday events it would probably take her thje full three weeks of Dragon Bash before she'd earn enough to buy staffs on two of her accounts. She reckoned she might even manage the third if she really worked at it.

I didn't plan on going that hard but I thought I'd definitely make the effort to get at least one. It was certainly pretty enough to make it feel worth it. And it would be nice to have a positive, practical reason to do the dailies and some of the events most days. Nothing like a sense of purpose.

I meant to get started on it today, after I finished in World vs World. I was doing my dailies there, when the dreaded three-minute warning sounded. It happens quite often after a patch. Some bug had been found and fixed, so everyone had to log out to get the update. If you happen to be in WvW when something like this happens, you don't get the luxury PvE players have of waiting for a convenient moment. Players on competetive maps need to have the same build so everyone gets kicked.

I thought I'd check the update notes to see what had changed. It was, as it almost always is on these occasions, a server crash. Since I had the main update notes from yesterday in front of me, I read those, too.

This line jumped out at me: "Three new weapons are now available as rare drops from dragon coffers. They can also be purchased from Sparking Stone, a new Dragon Bash weapons vendor in Hoelbrak." Say what? That seemed odd. The same weapons the new guy was selling were also this year's rare drops from the Holiday Lootboxes? Free, in-game lootboxes, that is, before anyone starts sharpening their pitchforks.

I told Mrs. Bhagpuss and she asked whether they were also tradeable, since if they were they'd be on the trading post in no time and maybe she wouldn't need to work on those Jorbreakers after all. I checked and there were none for sale but while I was at the vendor (reminding myself what the things were called so I could search for them) I noticed there was a dialog option I'd missed.

Chatting with the vendor, Sparking Stone explained how the weapons he was selling could also be found in the dragon coffers, if you were very fortunate. I refuse to feel embarassed for missing that the first time round. Who takes random dialog options from merchants?

I passed this information on to Mrs. Bhagpuss and carried on with my pinatas. Then, just a few minutes later, a link to the new staff appeared in guild chat. Mrs. Bhagpuss had been opening her coffers as they dropped and guess what had fallen out?

I congratulated her and thought about things for a moment. I was fairly sure I had a stack or two of those boxes stashed from last year. I went to the bank and checked and it turned out I had more than eight hundred tucked away for a rainy day.

The reason I store these things for years is precisely for this kind of situation. ANet generally don't create new containers when they add items to an annual event. They just alter the contents of the old ones. If there's nothing much I want one year I hold onto my stock in the hope next year will bring something better.

So I started opening coffers. I'd opened about thirty when the new warhorn dropped. That was a good sign. I kept going and with coffer #96 out came the staff. It hadn't even taken a hundred pulls to get what I wanted.

I put the other seven hundred or so back in the bank and considered my luck. Mrs Bhagpuss and I had bounced three of the new weapons from scarcely more than a hundred tries. That would hardly count as rare by the standards of most mmorpgs I've played but by the standards of GW2, where drop rates have historically been appalling, it seems incredibly generous. 

Or we were just incredibly lucky. It's clearly too small a sample to tell. If I was sufficiently motivated I might open another five hundred coffers and keep a count. That would probably give me a better idea. I think I'd rather save my boxes for the next good thing, thanks.

The real question I'm asking myself is how lucky is "lucky" anyway? Before the two staffs dropped so easily this afternoon we both had several weeks of content ahead of us. Working to earn something in a holiday event is a classic way to spend time in an mmorpg. 

Assuming Mrs. Bhagpuss doesn't pull another staff out of a box, she can now carry on with her plan to get the Jorbreakers she needs to buy the staff for her other two accounts. I'd bet she does get the drop before she gets that far, though. You get a lot of dragon coffers, doing these events every day.

I, on the other hand, am now finished with my Dragon Bash plans for this year. I got the only item I wanted on the first day. 

I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. I'm genuinely happy to have the staff and I'm also very happy to see ArenaNet getting into the holiday spirit. They've been scrooging for far too long. On the other hand, it does seem like they already covered the "don't stress - you'll get the thing you want" part just by putting the weapons on the vendor in the first place.

There's just no pleasing some folks, is there?

Ethereal Message : EQII

It's holiday time in Norrath once again. The brief hiatus ended with the coming of Oceansfull three weeks ago and this morning saw the start of Scorched Sky. Both of them are relatively new, having been introduced to the game in 2018 for the precise purpose of filling the long gap between the end of Bristlebane Day (and Beast'r) in mid-April and the start of Tinkerfest in late July.

I didn't get round to posting anything about Oceansfull when it was on, this year, but I did spend an afternoon beneath the waves and along the shorelines of several different zones. There were several items I wanted for the lakeside Othmir enclave in the Mara Estate home where all my characters tend to hang out these days.

I got everything I was looking for. Like most holiday events in EverQuest II there's no real obstacle to getting anyything you might want, other than time and patience. The boats look especially splendid on Mara's placid waters, I think.

There were also two new quests, both of which I did. One is in Eastern Wastes, the other in Tranquil Sea. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now I reflect, something about those quests does strike me as a little odd. Involving no combat, with only housing items as rewards and designed to scale to all character levels, why put them in such inaccessible spots in mid-high level zones?

It's not that they're entirely unreachable by lower level characters. The areas where the quests take place are entirely safe. Getting to them could be something of an adventure at level ten, though. Then again, that's just the kind of adventure I used to relish, back in the days when I actually had low-level characters.

Scorched Sky started this morning and runs until 7 July. My Bruiser popped in to Darklight Woods to see what was new, if anything. He both was and wasn't a good choice because to him it was all new. I can't remember who I took there last time but it clearly wasn't him.

Unlike Oceansfull, whose watery theme turns up all kinds of furniture and appearance items that catch my eye and whose seaside settings appeal, Scorched Sky doesn't do all that much for me. I have a problem with armor that's permanently on fire. I can't help but imagine it burning the character who wears it.

Flaming mounts don't really light my fire, either. In fact, the whole molten look, incredibly common in many MMORPGs, makes me feel I'm looking at the cover of an eighties' metal album. Probably something by Iron Maiden or Judas Priest. Very much not the look I'm going for.

Scorched Sky this year does have something I do like - a new Overseer Quest. To get it you once again need to travel to somewhere rather inhospitable and unwelcoming, the Dragon's Breath Tunnel in the middle of Lavastorm, which I have to admit is about as appropriate place as you could possibly find for a celebration dedicated to Fennin Ro, the Tyrant of Fire and his son, Solusek Ro, the Burning Prince.

So far, no-one at all seems to have written up the new quest, Conflagrant Rites, for the wiki or anywhere else. I started it in the middle of writing this post. I'm on the first part, which takes thirty minutes. The reward for that, other than the next quest in the sequence and a regular Overseer crate, is a flaming, flying book that refuses to be photographed in the Dressing Room.

If it's like previous Overseer holiday quests I imagine it will have five parts, al lasting thirty minutes. If it comes with anything especially good I might pop back in and update this post with a screenshot or two.  
(Edit: I'm on what seems to be the final (at least, it's twice as long) of only three parts right now. The reward is a title, Flame Bearer, and a rolling cinderstone pet, which looks exactly as you might imagine.)

As well as Scorched Sky we also have the first phase of the Summer Ethereal campaign. Ethereals are a tradition in EQII to which I paid little attention for a long time. They're the exact opposite of the usual calendar holidays in that they exist almost entirely to give out top-end adventuring gear. I used to think of them as something raiders did although I think they were always also accessible to Heroic group players, too.

A year or two back, the door was nudged open for solo players to poke thier noses in and peer at the ethereal glow and I started to take a bit more of an interest. This year, seeing that I've been playing regularly and making a decent fist of upgrading several of my max-level characters, I've decided to make more than a token effort at collecting enough Peculiar Medallions, the currency in question

I'm hoping to buy at least one or two of the 200 Resolve accessories. There's a weekly quest called Ethereal Ahoy. It's auto-granted and completes as soon as you finish any of the regular Blood of Luclin weekly quests, including the solos. I finished one this morning and got two dozen Peculiar Medallions.

Summer ethereals, which come in three phases, stay around for about fifteen weeks, so if I did Ethereals Ahoy every week I'd earn exactly enough to buy three items plus three "Shard of Peculiar Allies", the adornment that allows the items to be upgraded. That makes it likely they'll stil be useful even after the inevitable stat inflation of the winter expansion, which obviously increases the appeal.

Whether I'll have the discipline to do it every week remains to be seen but I really ought to be able to manage at least enough for a couple of earrings. EQ2Traders has a detailed explanation of how the event works, if needed.

Last and very much not least there's a fresh trio of free Pride bunny familiars in the cash shop. I'll probably try and knock out a quick post on them in their own right because the whole thing's quite interesting, but just in case I don't get time, I'm mentioning them now. If you play EQII you wouldn't want to miss out on them. Aside from the cultural significance, they're decent familiars (1807 Potency, 807 Crit Bonus, 3.4% to all Attributes) and they can, naturally, be used for Overseer questing.

So much all happening at once. I can't keep up!

Excuse Me While I Scorch The Sky : EQ2

Next Tuesday the latest quarterly instalment (overdue) of The Living Story (World, whatever...) should finally drop for GW2. Handy for me since changes to my work pattern this week put me at home Tuesday through Thursday. Then again, the weather forecast is so good I may not want to stay indoors...

The trailer certainly doesn't encourage me to miss out on the sunshine. It's lackluster in the extreme, especially when compared to the excellent lead-in to the last episode. If I never see or hear Joko again it will be too soon. Everything other people felt about Scarlet goes double for what I feel about this tedious, cliched piece of fan service.

Still, nothing wrong with lowering expectations. Under-promising means anything not terrible feels like a win and something halfway decent knocks it out of the park.

That's a lesson Daybreak Games seems to have taken very much to heart. With restricted resources and reduced ambitions, the small team working on EQ2 has apparently decided to make a virtue out of necessity. They're making a pretty good fist of it, too.

As previously mentioned, despite having one of the more extensive Holiday Calendars in MMOdom, there has always been something of an early summer lull in Norrath. Nothing much happens between Bristlebane Day in April and Tinkerfest in mid-July.

Well, it does now. May is still vacant, other than for the regular, monthly City Festival and Moonlight Enchantments, but June now has the otterly charming Oceansfest and next we get another new Live Event - Scorched Sky Celebration.

It begins on June 28 and runs until July 10, squeezing into the gap before the gnomish carnival arrives on the 19th. Scorched Sky is already up on Test and EQ2 Traders has a breakdown of what to do and where to do it.

I enjoyed Oceanfest so much I thought I'd jump the gun and drop in on rehearsals over on Test. There's a bit more to do this time than just collect gifts. That said, I'm not knocking the otters. They may not have laid on a whole lot of quests or activities but I'm certainly very happy with the gifts their deity, Prexus gave me. I now have my own permanent Othmir celebration on the shores of my Mara Estate home and it looks fabulous.

For Scorched Sky there's actually some fighting to do. Fire elementals spawn all around the celebrations, which take place in nine different zones of varying levels. The mobs aren't agro until you get within melee range, whereupon they stabilize at your character's level to give you a fair fight. Fair for you, that is, not for them. They die very easily.

They also have a slight tendency to flicker in and out of agro status, which may be fixed before they go Live. If not it won't matter. It only happened to me two or three times out of more than eighty kills and it only lasts a few seconds.

Every elemental drops a Coin of Ember (two if you're an All Access subscriber), which is the currency the merchant takes. There's one at every celebrant camp and the stock is very enticing, particularly if you happen to be a decorator. (You can watch a seventeen minute video about that, which gives you more detail than you'll probably ever want).

The pricing is also extremely generous, to the point where I wondered if it had been set low for testing purposes. I bought both the house pets for three coins each and the mount for fifty. That's about fifteen minutes farming for a subscriber. For the first day or two, competition for spawns on Live may slow that down a tad.

I might not have bought the fiery horse had I realized that being ground-bound means it can't be used as the appearance for a flying mount. On the other hand, it only took me about half an hour to collect fifty coins so why not? It looks great!

When I'd killed my way to precisely half the cost of the mount, an Achievement popped up. Killing twenty-five elementals gets you a title - "the Scorched". I love titles. They're one of the few things I'll jump hoops for in a game - titles, pets, mounts and hats, pretty much.

There's also a collection, which follows the newly familiar pattern: a set of three shinies in each of the three level ranges of the nine zones. It makes the collect fair for all levels and encourages people not to stand in one place all day, farming for alts. You have to stand in three places instead.

I completed the collection without any hassles except in The Commonlands, where the very long grass around Dog Trapper Lake made it hard to spot the little purple dots. Got 'em in the end. Unfortunately I  forgot to do the hand-in so I don't have a snapshot of the reward, which according to Naimi Denmother is a tapestry.

The final part of the holiday program is a repeatable quest in the main cities that sends you looking for firework launchers to light up the sky. The quest sneakily doesn't appear at all until you buy a 10 copper sparkler from the vendor, whereupon the guy standing next to him spots you have the wherwithal and pops up a blue feather. I liked that touch.

I liked the whole thing, in fact. A lot. I pottered around for an hour, enjoyed myself, relaxed and came away with some very nice additions to the decor of my Ratonga Bruiser's three-room Freeport suite. I will very definitely be doing it all again when Scorched Sky goes Live, most probably with several characters.

We'll see what happens come Tuesday when the next LW chapter drops for GW2. Maybe something will surprise me there. My expectation, though, is that I'll get more entertainment and more lasting satisifaction from Daybreak's "summer fun" than Anet's raised "quality bar" can provide.