Don't Applaud. Just Throw Money.

What with all the other exciting new games, betas and demos flying around of late, I feel I've been neglecting the only game I pay a subscription for: EverQuest II. Okay, technically the All Access Membership isn't a "subscription" as such and it also applies to EverQuest, DCUO and Planetside 2 but even on the odd occasions I play any of those other games, I don't take advantage of my membership perks. I pretty much only use those in EQII.

I haven't forgotten about the old game entirely, though. Towards the end of last month, just before Blaugust began, I managed to creep a little further towards the end of the Signature Adventure questline from last year's expansion. I finished two more instances and a couple of open-world segments. I think I have maybe four more instances left and I'm reasonably confident I'll get them done before the next expansion arrives.

Even though I haven't done much to upgrade my gear this year, what with the current season of Overseer rewards being very much less overpowered than in previous years, I still found the instances significantly easier than I was expecting. Even the small, incremental increase in power afforded by the gear I've received from doing holiday content made quite a difference.

It was so much easier, in fact, that I was able to ignore most of the bosses' special attacks and just stand there pummeling them. That is absolutely my preferred combat style. There was a fair amount of being thrown up in the air but I use one of my cloaks with the Featherfall effect if I suspect I'm going to get kicked around and it works wonders.

I was enjoying myself and making progress, which is always a heady combo, so I might have expected to do a little more but these days I have to limit my serious game-playing to the times when I can guarantee I won't be interrupted by a small dog jumping up and battering at my mouse-hand with her paws.

Beryl has an almost supernatural ability to be fast asleep for hours until the precise moment when I begin doing something that can't easily be interrupted, whereupon she seems to teleport to my side and begin her "You must come NOW!! It can't WAIT!!" routine. It's a strong contributory factor to my current preference for low-stakes gameplay that can be dropped at a moment's notice, although I admit it was pushing at an already open door.

For the same reason, I thought at first I'd have some difficulty fitting in the required minimum ten runs through the Summer Jubilee dungeon to get my new Plume but luckily I discovered early on that you can cheese the whole thing by mentoring down. Even so, I still didn't manage to get it done during the first two holidays, Tinkerfest and Scorched Skies. 

The third and final holiday of the summer, Oceansfull, was my last chance so when I saw this morning that it had started I thought I'd better waste no time and get on with it. I couldn't remember how many runs I'd done already. I guessed it had been at least three in each festival, maybe four, so I was expecting to have to do it two or possibly three more times.

It turned out to be just the once! I was very surprised when Meldrath's battle-suit thingy crumpled at the end on my first try today and the "A Jubilee For You And Me" achievement popped. I didn't even realize what it was for a moment but then I saw the plume and realised I was done.

Well, not really. If I wanted to do it properly I'd need another ten ticks on my Trial of Elements dance card. That gets you the upgraded version. Given that Oceansfull is here until 23 August and you can do the instance every three hours, obviously I have time to fit it in. I can rip through it in barely a quarter of an hour so it wouldn't take me much more than a couple of hours in total.

It's not very likely I'll bother. Doing it ten times got me three Plumes, one for each of three key combat stats (Crit Bonus, Health and Ability Doublecast.) and also the Plumes of Inspired Jubilation recipe book that lets me make (Inferior.) versions of all three for any of my other characters, should I decide they might need them. It's exceedingly unlikely I'll be doing any content that needs anything better before the next expansion comes out and by then I imagine we'll already be looking at upgrades.

Doing the instances those ten times, plus whatever other holiday content I did, which wasn't much but also wasn't none, I somehow amassed exactly one hundred Silver Jubilation Medals. Since I was at the vendor getting my plumes (Which are free.) anyway, I thought I might as well have a look at what else was on offer.

I'd already bought a couple of odds and ends when I spotted that you can buy this year's silver medals with last year's copper ones - at an exchange rate of three to one. When I saw that I decided it was probably best to spend mine now instead of just hanging on to them in the vague possibility that I might want them for something next year.

I bought some paintings and several potted plants along with another bag of teleportation pads. Those always come in handy. It still left me with plenty of medals so I chucked caution to the wind and bought myself a dog.

The dog, a cosmetic pet, goes by the description of Wire Haired Retriever, which someone with an extremely literal turn of mind felt necessary to correct on the forums, claiming it should really be called an English Setter. My aunt had an English Setter for many years and whatever this dog is meant to be I can guarantee it's not one of those.

It doesn't have to be any recognizeable breed, of course, because this is fricken' Norrath! Have you seen the kind of animals they have there? Why would anyone take issue with a specific breed of dog? Just be glad the thing's not part hell-hound.

I tried to get a decent picture of him but for all the game's many merits, one feature EQII distinctly lacks is one of those in-game photo suites I've come to love. Seriously, if they'd just release a good on as an add-on feature, I'd happily pay Daybreak $20 for it. I'd take it over an expansion, frankly. I know I'd get more use out it, long-term.

Failing that, you'll just have to squint and see if you can make out what my dog looks like. His name is Scruff because he is one. He barks very convincingly, which is probably going to give me even more problems with Beryl at some point.

There's some new content for Oceansfull I'd like to do so I'll try to get another session in before the Othmir pack up their conch-shell caravanserai and move on, taking the Summer Jubilee with them. Next stop on the carousel is probably the expansion prelude, followed by Panda Panda Panda. 

My All Access Membership expires next month. I will be renewing for the nineteenth consecutive year. I may not get as much use out of it as I once did but I'd hate to be without it. 

I guess on that basis we can add this post to the Blaugust Creator's Appreciation Week pile. Thanks again, Daybreak!

Is It That Time Already?

It's probably about time for a quick update on how things are going in EverQuest II.. Past time, really. I'd normally have put up something about this Summer's Producer's Letter when it came out a week ago but as Wilhelm suggested in his post, there wasn't all that much to say.

There was the part about rolling another three expansions into the free-to-play offer. That surprised me a bit but only because I thought the whole thing already worked on a rolling "two expansions behind the current one" plan, whereby a new-old expansion opened up for F2P every time a new-new one went on sale. 

I suppose that would be far too simple and straightforward for a F2P plan; not just EQII's - anyone's. Ever since the concept of giving the game away then clawing the cash back somehow took over the genre, there's been a drive to make the whole process as fiddly, complicated and annoying as possible, for obvious reasons.

Four legs good, six legs better. My new Familiar

It's been a while since I played EQII for free. For years I was in the peculiar position of paying a subscription for an account that I rarely used while playing full-time as a F2Per on another. I won't rehash the convoluted chain of circumstances that led to such an  idiosyncratic, not to say idiotic, choice. Suffice to say I eventually swapped the sub over to the account I was actually using and managed for once not to mess it all up again. Well, on EQII, at least. Different story when I was playing EverQuest at the same time but we'll gloss over that...

Due to the way the both the game and I have changed over the years, it seems unlikely I'd ever go back to playing multiple accounts. I do still, very occasionally, log in on my old ex-sub account or even one of the half-dozen other F2P accounts I made for... reasons. My days of logging in multiple characters on multiple accounts just to get free items or do holiday events are (Almost certainly...) over.

That kind of behavior is and always has been a significant aspect of EQII culture, though. My handful of accounts and couple of dozen regularly-played characters were evidence of restraint and self-control by the prevailing standards of the playerbase at one time and I don't believe all that much has changed. I knew people who did all the new holiday content for every festival, every year, on every character, on multiple accounts. Some people had characters on every server and worked hard to keep all of them current. 

It still goes on, although the way the levelling path was narrowed to a single track a few years ago, making it mandatory to gain all of your xp from the main questline in the latest expansions, put a crimp in many peoples' desire to run a huge stable of adventuring alts. Nothing's really changed for crafters and decorators, though, and they were always the demographic most likely to run multiple accounts and play scores of characters.

Didn't I get this letter last year?

I'd like to think I'm well past my own dabbling with such behavior. Ironically, now I'm semi-retired I seem to find a lot less time to play video games. Not sure how that's happened. Still, I have been making time to work on the Summer Jubilee content, specifically the new Plume slot. 

The Scorched Sky Celebration holiday ends today and I just ran the repeatable Summer Jubilee dungeon again, right before I started this post. I'm not sure how many times I've done it but I must be closing in on the ten runs needed for the first Plume. I'll certainly finish that off when the third and final summer holiday, Oceansfull, arrives in August but I don't think there's much chance I'll get the twenty runs needed for the upgraded version.

There were a few other things I wanted to during Scorched Sky but I haven't gotten around to doing any
of them. I started the big, centerpiece dungeon but I didn't finish it and now I'd have to start again, which was never going to happen. I've done all of it before and anyway it'll be back next year, so my motivation is not the highest.

I've blown my chance for this year, anyway. The game is down for "Extended Maintenance" today, after which Scorched Sky will have gone. EQII usually  patches or resets on a Tuesday but this week it's Wednesday and instead of the usual couple of hours, it's going to be down all day. 

The extensive patch notes mostly cover a sweeping upgrade to the Epic abilities that were a cornerstone of last year's Renewal of Ro expansion. Needless to say, I haven't even glanced at those. I have no clue how you get them let alone what they were before the patch or why they needed to be improved. 

I'm increasingly of the opinion that trying to keep up to date as a solo player in EQII is a mug's game. It's rarely necessary for anything I do and even when it is I can't ever get ahead. New rungs get added to the vertical progression ladder so frequently it makes a lot of sense to skip one or two, then clamber up over them later. 

This is the first year for a good while that I haven't finished the main expansion Adventure quest and it's clarified something I'd been wondering about for a while. Every year we get the Panda quests that reward a full set of armor, weapons, accessories and augments that upgrade the main questline rewards from the previous expansion. Then, when the new expansion drops, now only a few weeks later, since the Panda quests got moved to Autumn, we get a full set of upgrades to the Panda stuff in the Tishan's Box next to the first questgiver.

This instance has been a great source of crafting books.

It never made much sense to me until now but I finally realize it allows sluggards like me to overgear and finish the solo content from the outgoing expansion before the incoming one arrives. There are a number of reasons why you might want to do that; rewards and perks other than gear, various flags set on your character for future content etc. etc. Plus it's just tidy to finish up the last one before starting the next.

Mostly, new expansions start clean, but there's always some crossover and the leg-up right at the end allows for a smoother transition. In previous years I haven't needed to think about that but this year it seems like something I'd appreciate. That's my current theory for why it's the way it is, anyway.

The patch notes had a few amusing lines I'm going to share. I always enjoy a good, snarky patch note.

Call to home now functions correctly for those that call a dirty cave in the ground their home "city".

I think that's a dig at Betrayal, the questline that allows you to change faction from Freeport to Qeynos or vice versa. I did it once, a very long time ago, and I seem to remember that for a while you are stateless and have to skulk in a hole with minimal facilites until you re-align with your new city-state. Or it could be Gorowyn. I never liked Gorowyn.

Corrected an issue where the Replica: Wanted Poster wanted to be a guild amenity, and would vanish from homes after being placed. It now wants to be where it is wanted, instead of where it wanted to want to be.

And now I want to know how you get a Replica: Wanted Poster. Going to have to look into that.

Newly created illusionists once again have a sharp pokey thing to stick into those that annoy them. Or do they? Maybe it's all a figment of your imagination?

I've never played an Illusionist past about level 30. Maybe that's something I ought to try. I like poking things with sticks.

Oh, yeah! I was going to do this one, too! Too late now.

Looking ahead, there's another major Update in September and I haven't even started the content from the last one. It was too tough so I gave up. My spirit animal is Bart Simpson. Also, see my earlier comments about the steepness of vertical progression in this game. I probably could give the instance from the last GU another try, now I have the gear from running the Summer Jubilee dungeon, which I'm very happily cheesing using the mentoring system. Shame that doesn't work for the regular instances.

And finally, there's all the great charity work EQII and Darkpaw do, namely Extra Life and Daybreak Games' Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion initiative. I know all the big gaming companies like us to know how socially aware they are but I find Daybreak and especially Darkpaw more convincing than most. Let's hope that doesn't come back to bite me...

There's probably more that I've forgotten but as Wilhelm said at the end of his post on the same topic, the world keeps on turning. We'll be back here again soon enough, talking about the Autumn/Winter Producer's Letter, by which time I'd expect us to know the name and theme of this year's expansion.

It'll be more desert. I'm calling that now.

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...

Bring The Jubilee

It's technically still Spring, although the weather outside is telling me it's Summer already. The EverQuest II team must think so too because they just announced their plans for this year's Summer Jubilee and they're awesome!

Okay, maybe not awesome because it's not 1992 and EQ2 doesn't have a 90210 Zip Code but summer in the Shattered Lands is looking pretty darn cool, let's just say that much. 

No, wait, no, not cool. That's just confusing. Um... fire, maybe? Okay, that's just as bad, but in the other direction.

Bitchin'? The cat's miaow? 

Erm...this isn't helping, is it?

Minus the confusing and chronologically-challenged slang, Summer Jubilee looks like it's going to be lots of fun. The event brings the three big seasonal holidays - Tinkerfest, Scorched Sky and Oceansfull - together under one, big holiday banner, stretching all the way from the beginning of  June to the end of August. 

The EQ2i wiki, once an absolute authority on just about everything that you could possibly need to know about the game, has been slipping of late. The Live Events Timeline there makes no mention of the Summer Jubilee at all. Worse, it still has Scorched Sky in June and Tinkerfest in August, whereas they actually swapped places last year.

For the most up-to-date information you're always better off looking at the in-game calendar but if you want to check out of game I'd recommend EQ2 Traders Corner, which these days has the considerable advantage of being run by the game's dedicated (In all senses.) tradeskill developer, Naomi Denmother. There, you'll find the dates neatly tabulated:

• Tinkerfest — June 5, 2023 to June 21, 2023
• Scorched Sky Celebration — June 29, 2023 to July 12, 2023
• Oceansfull Festival — August 10, 2023 to August 23, 2023

In fact, now I come to look at it closely, that's even clearer than the official Calendar, which has to cope with two events happening at the same time. So maybe go to EQ2Traders first. I don't know... I'm sure you can work it out!

The full details of what's new for the individual events are still under wraps but there's some exciting news about the new content that runs across the whole summer. First, we're getting a new equipment slot: Plume.

The Plume slot allows you to equip an item that gives you some very big bonuses to one of your choice of three key stats: Ability Doublecast, Crit Bonus or Max Health Percentage. You can obtain these by doing Summer Jubilee content but once you get one, you also get a recipe that lets you craft more. 

As the illustrations show, the stats are hefty enough to be useful even at Level 1 but of course you can level them up as the event goes on. If you're one of those strange people who actually play with others in MMORPGs, it gets even better:

 "When grouped the power of your Plume will be amplified by how many other group or raid members are also using a Plume."

Not only that but 

"The power your Plume gains is based on the tier of your Plume, so even groupmates that have not yet unlocked the best tier of Plume will contribute fully to the amplification effect of everyone in the group or raid."

It seems like a well-designed, well thought-out addition to the game to me but of course, this being EQII, the initial reaction on the forums is one of deep suspicion. One annoyingly persistent Debbie Downer (2004 says Hi!) wanted to know if this was just another way Daybreak planned to screw more money out of the players:

"Also, could you tell us if this new system will be monetized like the merc, mount familiar? Or will it be an extra item simply lootable via quests or achiev ? Basically, is this implementation only the beginning of a new cash system planned later? Like seeing op plume in crates, pushing players and raids to look into it, After a well-crafted hook? "

Naomi Denmother, employing the infinite patience for which she is so well-known, while no doubt wishing she could clout the Moaning Minnie (1942 says Hello!) with her rolling pin, explained that it was none of those things:

"No. This is an event slot, for participating in holiday events. It is 100% meant to be a fun, attainable item. Let's please not remove everyone's fun and enthusiasm with such speculations on the first day it is announced."

I very nearly signed in to alert the complainers to Wilhelm's excellent post about the current attempt by minority EG7 shareholder Alta Fox Capital Management to force the whole group, Daybreak included, into a series of moves designed to wring every last dime out of the games before they toss the empty carcasses onto the pile of corpses left by the rest of the late-capitalist leeches and move on, like the vultures they are, to the next victim. For all that EQII players think they're being screwed over now, they'll be looking back at this as some kind of Golden Age, when the bastards get their way.

Or if. Let's go with "if". If there's one thing the last decade or so has shown us, it's that Jason Epstein and whoever else is in charge over there really don't like to let too much light into the room. I'm guessing Daybreak has ended up tucked safely under the wing of the Swedish regulatory authorities through something more than pure happenstance. If the games have any protection, it's probably that.

At least we can hope so. Meanwhile, we can just play the damn games and enjoy ourselves. Well, some of us can.

Getting back to the joys and pleasures of an EQII summer, the other significant feature highlighted in the announcement is this:

 "Summer Jubilee Dungeon – Triad of Elements - Opening once Tinkerfest goes live is a new solo dungeon called, Triad of Elements. Whether you’re level 1 or 125, this dungeon is open to all and can be repeatedly completed throughout each Summer Jubilee in-game event... head in and farm to your heart’s delight... the loot that drops will be level-appropriate every time"

A new solo dungeon is always welcome, especially a scaling dungeon that you don't have to be a subscriber to access and that drops loot. Whether it's loot worth having, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Also whether running it gives decent xp below level 100 (It certainly won't after that but that's a diferent question). If it does, I have a level 60 whose going to be very interested.

The dungeon looks like it'll be the primary source of Silver Jubilee Medals, this year's summer event currency, as well as the way you'll upgrade your Plume. The medals can be spent at the appropriate Jubilee merchants, who've added twenty-two new items to their stock, including a dog pet and a mount, species unspecified.

Well, unspecified in the official forum post, that is. If you'd care to look at that EQ2 Traders post I linked earlier, however, you'll find an absolute wealth of detail, including a full list of those twenty-two new items, with pictures. The mount is a "Parade Roan Stallion" and it's an appearance ground mount , which means I probably won't use it. These days you'd pretty much have to be a dedicated roleplayer to use a ground mount, I think.

The dog, though, looks fun and I could find plenty of uses for some of those house items. EQ2 Traders has a full list of how to get the medals needed to buy them (Do all the quests, basically, then keep running that dungeon if they're not enough or if you hate doing quests, in which case boy, are you playing the wrong game...)

There's also a clear explanation of how to upgrade the Plume (Do the dungeon ten times.) and how to get an even better Plume than that (Do it ten times more so you can buy an upgrade from the in-game vendor.) Also, the crafted Plumes aren't quite as good as the quested ones, presumably for reasons.

I'm very happy with all of that. It seems like a much more egalitarian system than the Summer Ethereals it replaces and the 2023 event looks like a good iteration on the inaugaural version from last year. About the only thing I really wish was different would be for the Plume to be a display slot. It'd be so great to be able add a Plume you could actually see to your hat! 

Or maybe that's just me.

The Roadmap Goes Ever On

Ooh! Look! A roadmap! I like roadmaps.

And apparently so does everyone else. We're getting this one because "Last year's "experiment" was so well received".

I suspect "astonished" was closer to most people's reaction at the time, when the inaugural EverQuest II Roadmap appeared on 19 January 2022. I was sufficiently taken with the whole concept, I managed to post two thousand words about it, albeit many of them cut and pasted from the document itself.

I wrapped the whole thing up by saying "Let's hope the players appreciate it". Looks like they did, which is pretty close to a miracle in itself, given the general tenor of the EQII community these days.

In last year's post, I went through the whole thing almost line by line. I'm not planning on doing that again. For one thing I don't have the enthusiasm for it, what with the novelty value having worn off, but for another a quick scan through the details suggests a focus on more renovation, less innovation this time around, which gives me less to talk about.

That's in no way a criticism. EQII is a live service game and this roadmap firmly endorses that model. The team clearly have a handle on what works for the game and its core audience. Almost everything in the schedule involves building on the strong foundation they've already established. 

As I suggested, quite mildly, earlier, the installed base for EQII can be highly critical and hard to please, something it has in common with the equivalent demographic in many long-running mmorpgs. In the last year or so, however, I have begun to detect at least some small cracks in the wall of opposition to anything new. 

Time and attrition have boiled off most of the uncommitted along with many of those who really can't stomach change. I wouldn't say those who remain were more easy-going or open-minded about the direction the game is headed but I do sense less hostility in the conversation. Apparently telling people your plans ahead of time and then sticking to them does build trust. Who'd have guessed?

So, FV! What's the plan?

It's always a bit presumptive to allocate successful policy to a single person but Jenn Chan's appointment as Head of Studio does seem to mark something of a watershed. Compared to just about every one of her predecessors, including figureheads and spokespeople as well as actual Studio leads, she comes across as more straightforward, less tricksy. She has a knack of putting things in terms that sound both friendly and authoritative, which is more than many people in similar positions seem to be able to manage.

All in all, as a player, I get the feeling of a ship in reasonably safe hands, sailing in fairly calm waters. Or, I guess, since this is a roadmap we're talking about, not a navigational chart, a competent driver on a well-maintained highway. Compared to almost any era of EQII's history, from the rocky launch and subsequent Hail Mary pass that saved it, through the imperial decline of the later Smedley administration (Speaking of the devil...) to the frankly terrifying Columbus Nova sleigh-ride, this feels like coming out of the storm into safe harbor at last.

Cue the whole thing falling apart in six weeks time...

Enough preamble. What's in the roadmap that's worth a closer look?

Well, I was taken by the use of the repeated phrases "New updates" and "New large updates" as used to describe the various holiday events. Most of the old favorites get the basic version, which I imagine means some different rewards for the existing quests, new things to buy from the vendors, probably some new crafting books. 

The focus, as last year, seems to be on building the summer into a major festival season. Last year saw Oceanfest, Scorched Sky and Tinkerfest stitched together under the banner of Summer Jubilee. This year sees the process continued and consolidated, with all three events receiving "large updates", something that last year included not just fresh quests but new dungeons and instances. 

Sometimes I wonder if they give us too much... Nah, just kidding!

The Jubilee is clearly intended as a permanent replacement for the old summer Ethereal event, which suits me very well. I never really bothered with that, group-focused as it tended to be. A much-expanded suite of holiday events would seem to have a much wider appeal across the whole playerbase than one purely aimed at the endgame elite, although just how broad a church the EQII playerbase might be nowadays is another question altogether. All in all, though, it looks like a solid use of resources.

Presumably much of that necessarily limited resource (Albeit, perhaps, not quite as limited as it would have been a few years back.) will be directed towards the two numbered Game Updates (122 and 123) and the annual expansion, a very substantial amount of brand-new content for a game of EQII's vintage. 

It's revealing - and reassuring -  that the existence of yet another expansion is now so much to be expected it can simply be mentioned in the same terms as every other recurring, annual event. A sea-change from just a couple of years back, when speculation flourished over whether each expansion would be the last.

There's a lot in the roadmap about various unlocks and server mergers for the TLE subculture, none of which need concern us here. Of slightly more interest is the addition of yet another new, special rules server in April, this one using a PvP ruleset. EQII maintains a highly vocal, if not necessarily all that numerous, advocacy for PvP but almost no iteration of the playstyle yet tried seems to suit enough would-be players to stick. The advantage of catering to the PvP crowd by way of the TLE system would seem to be the format's inbuilt obsolescence, meaning the server doesn't necessarily have to hold a crowd for the long term to be considered a success.

Mark it in your calendar, Zel. Retraining course in May.

There's one planned, systemic change to the game this year that could prove significant. In May there's an updating of the AI used by mercenaries to assist and heal players: "Mercenaries will more reliably heal and resurrect their companions, and generally react faster, with higher tier mercenaries gaining increased reaction time over their common brethren." 

At the purely solo level I play, I haven't noticed any major issues with my mercenaries but I have been aware of some undertow of complaint for a while now. I certainly wouldn't trust mine on anything much harder than a boss in a solo instance and even then it's sometimes a close call. 

What I'd really like to see addressed, though, is the placement of the merc. Mine has a suicidal urge to stand in front of anything I'm fighting, taking every AE full in the face. Even if I put him on Passive and play like a proper tank, turning the mob, he has a terrible habit of shuffling round to stand next to me. Coupled with his seeming unwillingness to heal himself until the last moment, I've died more from my merc not healing himself than from his not healing me. If they fix that I'll be delighted.

There's more in the full roadmap but I think that covers the most salient points for now. If I've missed anything major, entirely likely given the limited attention I was paying as I flipped between the various sections, please let me know. I'd hate to be blindsided by something I should have seen coming down the road.

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!

Let's Tink Again (Like We Did Last Summer)

Not to rehash my own joke but it's Jubilee weekend here in the UK and by complete coincidence (I'm guessing...) it's also the week EverQuest II kicks off its very own Summer Jubilee. There's a pun in there somewhere involving EQII and Elizabeth II, Q(ueen) but I'm not going to be the one to try and dig it out.

Summer Jubilee incorporates three events and the first of them is Tinkerfest (The other two being Oceansfull and Scorched Sky). Relocated from midsummer, it's been polished till it gleams.

Judging by what I've seen so far it's better than ever, impressive when you consider it was already one of the top holidays in EQII's extensive calendar. It's also long been one of my personal favorites. I read the official announcement with interest and enthusiasm. 

Credit for some of that has to go to new Community Manager, Accendo. When he first arrived I wondered if he might be a little brusque, especially after the exceptionally affable Dreamweaver. For all I know, he might be a regular demon in ding-dongs with players, always a risk (Just ask RadarX), but in prose he has a strong, confident style and a sense of humor that amuses me more often than not. I'll take it.

For regular Live servers, there's a lot to dig into, all of it handily detailed in the press release:

• New adventure quest!
  • Blood, Sweat, and Gears offered by Tickni Kerplooie at Gnomeland Security in Steamfont Mountains for players level 120+.
• New tradeskill (tinkering) quest!
  • Gearing the Competition offered by Navier Stokes at Gnomeland Security in Steamfont Mountains.
• New dungeon with solo and heroic versions!
  • Innovation: Tinkerer's Trial [Heroic] and [Solo]
• 11 New Merchant Items sold by Myron in Gnomeland Security, including a new mount!
• New Tradeskill recipe book, "Tinkerfest Blueprints 14.0” sold by Myron in Gnomeland Security in Steamfont Mountains. The recipes require Shiny Tinkerfest Cog obtained as quest rewards or harvested, and other low level harvestables as components.

Special Ruleset servers get whatever subset matches their current timeframe and whatever rewards don't break their local zeitgeist, as per usual. 

I'd like to say all the regular events, quests, collections and achievements are back as well but I'm not absolutely sure if that's true. There's a slight element of ambiguity in "Lots of stuff is returning for this year's event too including achievements, recipe books, collections, quests, and more." "Lots" isn't a synonym for "All" but I imagine I'm reading more into the choice of words than Accendo intended. 

I made straight for Tinkerfest Central - Gnomeland Security in Steamfont - where I hoovered up every quest I could find. Some of them I recognised, some I didn't, but that happens at most festivals, whether there's anything new or not. I can't remember every quest I've ever done in EQII. There must be thousands! 

Most had blue feathers indicating repeatable content, something that's probably going to turn out to be important given the new Jubilee currency, the Copper Jubilation Medal. I had a good browse through the inventory of the Jubilee vendor I found, hanging around the East Freeport Docks later. Anyone taking this event seriously is going to need hundreds of medals to buy everything they want.

The rewards are very tempting, too. Lots of great housing and appearance items as always but also some very nice stat gear, at least for a solo player. The big ticket item is the 340 Resolve bracer trailed in the original announcement but there's also 300 Resolve gear for all armor classes. I imagine there'll be a full set of that by the time all three events have arrived. 

There's also a dog. That got me wondering if there had been dog pets in the game before. I'm sure there must have been. The dog model has been in the game from the start. I imagine they've always been there but I just never noticed, me being more of a cat person. 

Now we have a dog of our own I'm seeing dogs in all kinds of places I never saw them before, like on my lap while I'm trying to play EQII. It wouldn't matter so much if she didn't like to rest her chin on my mouse arm. 

Fortunately, EQII is relatively easy to play one-handed. I managed to grab all those quests and pick up a load of the Shiny Tinkerfest Cogs lying all over the place. The cogs are the Tinkerfest-specific currency, the event having vast amounts of buyables independent of the Jubilee. No doubt the same will apply to the other two festivals so it's just as well the quests reward both kinds. 

As soon as Beryl changed position, allowing me the use of both hands, I mapped to the other center of Gnomish activity, the Dropship Landing Zone in Moors of Ykesha to look for the the portal to the new, non-combat instance of Plane of Innovation. I wanted to do the tradeskill quest given to me by Navier Stokes back at Gnomeland Security. There's a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in Tinkerfest, always was, but even without All Access travel perks it's easy enough via the handy temporary portals the gnomes install for the occasion.

I've been around Plane of Innovation many times but sightseeing always feels better when nothing's trying to rip your arms off. I had time to look at the architectural details for once. 

The quest itself was very good, assuming you like EQII quests, which, obviously, I do. I'd pretty much have to, still to be playing after all these years. It follows the classic gather, craft, install sequence, where you spend ages wandering around picking up materials before knocking them into something on a local crafting device, before following a glowing trail around the zone, sliding the doohickeys you've created into the correct slots.  

No-one could claim this kind of content is challenging but it sure is relaxing. As a very, very bad tinkerer, I appreciated the huge Tinkerfest crafting boosts, the absence of negative effects to counter and the easy skill-ups. I didn't notice whether the quest was repeatable but if it is I might grind it out a few times until the recipe goes grey, just for the tinkering points.

There's a narrative thread relating to the possible induction of the first ever Froglok to the Ak`Anon Tinkerer's Guild. I found it oddly intriguing. It started me wondering just which races are capable of tinkering these days. I have a suspicion it's all of them. I know it used to be a purely gnomish skill back in EverQuest but I can't recall whether Ratongas could always tinker in EQII or whether that was a later concession.

Of all the races, you'd think the most obvious candidate after Gnomes would be Dwarves. I don't believe I've ever played a Dwarf in EQII, or not for any meaningful amount of time, at least. Frogloks would come a long way down any list I ever made but then I try not to think about frogloks at all if I can help it.

I'll have to give it some more thought as I work my way through the rest of what Tinkerfest has to offer. Next up is the new adventure quest, Blood, Sweat and Gears, followed by the Solo dungeon, the Tinkerer's Trial.   

I hope that one's not too tough. I always think holiday instances should be lenient but if the drops are competitive with current content it'll probably have to be at least as challenging as a regular Visions of Vetrovia instance, probably more so than the ones in the basic storyline since they're already beginning to fall behind.

I don't have all that long to get everything done, either. Even though the Summer Jubilee runs all summer (Well, duh!) Tinkerfest is only with us for a couple of weeks. The gnomes shut up shop on June 15.

I'd better get on with it, then.

You Wait Seventy Years For A Jubilee And Then Two Come Along At Once

I was going to skip posting today for the very good reason I didn't have anything in particular I wanted to say. Well, I did have a few ideas...

I read Paeroka's post on How to Return to LotRO, which mentioned the boosters we all got for the anniversary, so I thought I might log in and use one of those and see how it went. I got as far as character select once and the login screen three times (I'm tabbed out from it now.) but every time something happened to make me back off before I could get any further. Usually something dog-related.

Then there was Belghast's post, the one he called "New World Has Improved Significantly", a sentiment with which I don't disagree but about which I felt I had something to say. Then I thought about it and realised I'd probably said most of it the last time I wrote about the game.

There were even a few things I might have contributed to the discussion arising out of Blizzard's thrashing about as they try to increase diversity and reduce toxicity but that would have required some serious thought and I wasn't convinced I was up to it.

I'd just about decided to take a pass on the whole thing for the day, when I logged into EverQuest II to do set my  remaining Overseer missions and saw a new link in the patcher. It said Welcome to EverQuest II's First Annual Summer Jubilee!

Excuse me? 

I clicked through and this is what I got:

A whole new way to enjoy your summer and gain access to exclusive items.

We're proud to announce the launch of our first annual Summer Jubilee! This event lasts all summer long and will incorporate Tinkerfest, Scorched Sky Celebration, and Oceansfull Festival where players can earn Copper Jubilation Medals which can be used to purchase exclusive items.

There's a whole lot more, naturally, explaining the event in detail:

Live Servers

• Jubilation parades can be found in each of the player cities, pathing near the event merchant.
• Jubilation merchants can be found in each of the player cities exchanging event exclusive armor, house items, recipes, instruments, and equipment for Copper Jubilation Medals.
• Copper Jubilation Medals are heirloom and can be gained by completing most Tinkerfest, Scorched Sky Celebration, and Oceansfull Festival repeatable content.
• Daily Mission for each event dungeon end boss and can be updated in either solo or heroic.

Special Rules Servers (Including Varsoon)

• Start earning Copper Jubilation Medals during Tinkerfest and continue earning them through Scorched Sky Celebration and Oceansfull Festival.

And a lengthy section on the upgradeable bracers you can get that become more powerful the more events you do in all three of the summer holiday events:

Along with the Copper Jubilation Medals, we’re also adding in Golden F'Aestival Bracers. They're huge, they're shiny, and best of all, they're pretty powerful especially if you complete the Summer Jubilee event! How do you get a pair? Just log in during Tinkerfest and complete the event dungeon, Innovation: Tinkerer's Trial, six times. Once you do that, you'll have your new, Mythical bracers and ready to take on Scorched Sky Celebration and Oceansfull Festival.  

If you're interested in what they look like and what the stats are it's all there on the website at the link above. Suffice to say, the fully upgraded version clocks in at 340 Resolve and I'm currently turning cartwheels if I get anything over 295.

I'm assuming the Jubilee replaces the familiar Summer Ethereal event that's been running in the same slot for many years, although nowhere does it actually make that explicitly clear. I suppose the two could co-exist but I very much doubt that's the plan.

This looks much more inclusive and better-designed to me. Tying everything in with the existing holidays and expanding all three of them seems like a great idea.

Of course, great ideas also need great implementation so I'll reserve judgment until I get to try them all out. Tinkerfest is already up on the Test Server so I'll at least read the forums to find out how that's going, even if I don't log in and test it for myself.

It all kicks off on June 2, which just happens to be the same week as Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee. I know where I'll be celebrating...