Levels And Legacies

Redbeard has a post up today about leveling in World of Warcraft Retail and how fast it is these days, so fast he wonders whether there's really any point in having it at all. I have some thoughts on that but I'll leave them over there, in the comment thread. I thought about writing a whole post but I don't play WoW regularly and I don't know enough about it. I've never even reached the level cap there so anything I say is going to be suspect.

When it comes to EverQuest II, though, I have plenty of experience, albeit mostly from the perspective of a solo player these days, so I feel quite safe giving my thoughts. And what that experience tells me is that getting your levels is the absolute least of it. Even if you have no intention of engaging in end-game content, hitting max level is just the beginning.

Of course, the significance of the number next to your character's name in an MMORPG has always been mutable. Even back at the dawn of the genre, levels were only ever a means to an end.

Back in those olden-if-not-so-golden times, when leveling in MMORPGs was such a chore people sometimes bought their characters on EBay or paid someone else to level up for them, it was widely believed it took sixty levels or whatever the cap was to just to learn how to play your class. 

If you hadn't put in the hours, no-one wanted you in a group. Even if you did have the player-skills, your character most likely didn't. Or they didn't have the equipment. They probably didn't have the flags or the languages or the faction needed because all of that takes time - a lot more time than it takes to get the levels.

In many MMORPGs and especially in EQII, not as much has changed as you'd think. It's true that, over the twenty years the game has been around, almost every aspect of the game has been streamlined, pared down and made more user-friendly but the process only goes so far.

Streamlining something may make it faster but the irony of comparatives is that making something faster still doesn't make it fast. It isn't until you settle down to compare the accrued advantages of a character that's been played for thousands of hours with one that's been played for only a few hundred that you begin to appreciate the vast gulf that lies between them, even if their level counts make an exact match.

And it isn't until you go to do something about equaling them up that you realize just what a huge task it's likely to be. I'll just give one example.

What I've mostly being doing these past few weeks in EQII has been getting my Necromancer's harvesting speed down to 1.5 seconds. I wanted to do it because harvesting is virtually impossible to avoid in the game, even if you never craft or go out looking for crafting mats. Countless quests require it so it's not a skill easily or wisely ignored.

You might just about get away with leaving it alone as a pure Adventurer but I want my Necromancer (Her name's Mordita.) to be an all-rounder. I want her to adventure, craft and harvest. My Berserker (Conkers) does, so if she's going to replace him, she needs to as well. And crafters have to harvest a lot.

If she's going to do at-cap tradeskill content, she'll need to max all the harvesting skills (Mining, Trapping, Foresting, Fishing and Gathering itself.) The cap is currently 700 (Probably. Hard information is so hard to come by for the game these days. It's a worrying sign of the end times, I think.) 

I could raise these skills just by going out and hitting nodes but I've been working my way through the lengthy gathering questline instead. Most of it still involves going out and hitting nodes but it comes with some useful rewards so why not?  

It's taken me quite a few hours and most of Mordita's skills are still less than half-way to the cap so there's plenty more to go, which was why after I got to the end of the second quest chain, I decided I needed to do something about her harvesting speed. 

The base speed to complete one harvesting action is five seconds. Each node has a potential three pulls although not all pulls are successful. With a skill well below the recommended level for the type of node, which is where she's been and will be for a good while yet, you can easily end up standing next to the same rock, picking away at it for a dozen turns or more.

With the help of crafted items you can bring that down some but it still felt glacially slow compared to what I'd been used to with Conkers for as long as I can remember. As with everything in EQII, the exact mechanics and details are obscure but in general, base gathering speed bottoms out at one and a half seconds, which is then affected by your Casting speed. Conkers casting speed is 103% so his effective gathering speed is about 0.75 seconds, which feels pretty zippy.

To get there, he needed the Gathering Goblin AA, which requires you to be at least a Level 90 crafter and some other AAs but that just for the actual goblin, who follows you around harvesting. To turn him into a buff that reduces your base harvesting time to 1.5 you have to do a quest.

It's been a few years since I last did it but I vaguely remembered it involved speaking to another goblin in Obulus Frontier, a zone that arrived with the Kunark Ascending expansion back in 2016. Imagining it would take a few minutes, maybe half an hour at most, I trotted over to the zone to pick up the quest and of course the goblin wouldn't talk to me.

That sent me back to the Wiki to see what the problem was and it turned out to be quite a big one. I'll try to sum it up as succinctly as I can.

To get Growf the goblin to give you the first in the series of quests that concludes with you setting the gathering goblin free and receiving the harvesting speed buff, you need to have finished the whole of the Kunark Ascending crafting signature questline. Growf's bit is just a kind of coda at the end but it's dependent on the full thing.

I wasn't best pleased but it didn't sound too bad. Three or four hours, maybe, assuming I didn't read any of the quest dialog, all of which I'd seen more than once already. So I set about it, only to find you can't just start in on the KA questline out of nowhere. There's a pre-req: the entire tradeskill signature questline from the previous expansion, Terrors of Thalumbra.

This was starting to look like a much bigger project than I'd anticipated. Two complete expansion signature questlines. That was going to take a while, even if they were only crafting ones, which go a lot faster than their adventure counterparts. We're talking several full sessions for sure.

Got to be done, though. Off I went to get started on the ToA sequence, only to find I couldn't get that one either. For most expansions you get a letter inviting you to speak to someone and off you go but it seems that around this time the plan was to make sure everyone saw every part of the content  so before you can get the Thalumbra questline, you have to complete yet another pre-req, The Captain's Lament from the 2013 expansion, Tears of Veeshan. I think it was part of the pre-expansion build-up but it was a long time ago...

To release my Gathering Goblin from indentured servitude and receive, in recompense for my magnanimity, a reduction in my base harvesting speed to 1.5 seconds, I was going to have to complete the full tradeskill signatures from two expansions, plus the warm-up from the one before. 

All told, that comes to more than fifty separate quests. Fifty quests, just to upgrade one small aspect of Mordita's capabilities to bring them in line with Conkers'. And it's not even anything crucial to gameplay, just a minor quality of life improvement.

I wasn't counting but I played most evenings the last couple of weeks, generally for an hour or two each session. Even with the huge boost of instant map travel via All Access Membership, the huge advantage of being a max-level Adventurer, thereby making every mob in every required zone non-aggro, a full walk-through on hand, complete with locs to cut and paste into the game and the lack of any inclination on my part to read for the third time even a single line of quest dialog, it still took me that long to get it all done. 

And I was lucky Mordita already knew how to speak Gobblish, the Goblin language, because Growf doesn't speak anything else. If she hadn't, I'd have had to go do the quest for that as well.

Luckily for me, I enjoyed the whole thing. It had just the right level of simplicity for me not to feel the grind while I had to pay just enough attention to the instructions to make it seem like I was doing something. My sweet spot, really.

Even so, it's a hell of a long time to spend on such a small thing, while preparing one character to take over from another. If it was the only time I needed to do something like it, that would be one thing but it's just an example of a seemingly endless number of minor adjustments and calibrations that have to be made before Mordita is going to feel expansion-ready. 

Getting the levels, which used to be the barrier, is now literally the least of it. You can buy those, quite legitimately. I just had to click a button. But if anyone thinks a Max Level Boost is going to do all the work for them - or even most of it - they can think again. At least in EQII, they can. I don't know about other games. I bet it's much the same everywhere, though.

And let's not forget that all of this was mainly done as a way of speeding up another set of quests. Now that Mordita has the fast harvesting speed, it's back to the harvesting questline itself so she can use it, and that's going to take quite a few more hours to finish. 

After that, I'm going to have to take a close look at her stats and see what else she's missing. She could do with learning a whole bunch of languages, for a start.

Six months to the next expansion. I hope it's going to be enough...

Chipping Away At The Foundations : EQ2

I haven't logged into EQ2's Beta Server yet but I have been browsing the forums, where the tone is markedly different from the grinding negativity of Live. Similarly, the /Test chat channel, which I've been in for a decade and more following my five year residency on Test as my main server, has been buzzing with positivity as the stalwarts there take a run at the next Holiday on the rank, Hero's Festival.

The EverQuest games have always benefited from a strong culture of dedicated service among a subset of players, those who have always understood that MMORPGs are a collaborative hobby as much as a commercial enterprise. From the Guide program, through well-established, permanent Test servers to an extensive and well-organized beta process with a full supporting incentive and reward structure, determined, invested players and developers have co-operated to build the best games possible.

The latest iteration of this worthy and welcome process is the Daybreak Insider program. I haven't signed up yet but only because I'm not sure I can offer the time and commitment just now. It looks like a good way to become involved in the future direction of the MMOs we play and enjoy, not to mention getting some insider gossip and advance knowledge. I wonder if there's an NDA?

Stats! We love 'em!

The reason I was on the Beta forums this morning was to see what people were saying about crafting. While I have four Level 100 adventurers ready to go and an instant Level 100 token in the bank, I only have two max level crafters.

The Collector's and Premium Editions of Planes of Prophecy both come with the first ever Tradeskill Boost but I didn't buy either of those and I'm not going to upgrade. In any case, it's not getting to the starting line that concerns me - it's getting to the finish.

The last few expansions all came with fully fleshed-out crafting questlines that matched the adventure version in depth and complexity. Well, almost. They were substantial and satisfying, anyway, and for every expansion since Velious the crafting line has been the one I completed first.

That was when we still had Domino. Now that she's gone back to Canada things are different. I'm not even sure EQ2 has a dedicated Tradeskill dev any more and we already know there won't even be a Signature Tradeskill Questline when PoP launches. It's scheduled to be added in an update at an as-yet unspecified later date.

Nevertheless, we'll be getting ten more levels on November 28th. With no questline to bump up the xp, my Weaponsmith and Sage are both going to have to settle down at workstations and grind writs.

According to the Beta forums, at the moment that's a mountain to climb. There was a brief period when crafting xp flowed like water but that was because of a beta buff. Once that was switched off the complaints began to pour in.

There was good reason for the change. It wasn't just to slow testers down or make it harder for them to get the promised reward for hitting max level in Beta. As Caith, one of the EQ2 devs, put it on Discord:

"The reason we turned off the beta bonus xp is so that we can get an accurate picture of how it would be on live, and adjust as required".

Very sound. Unfortunately, not all of the necessary pieces are yet in place to give an accurate reading. The invaluable and indefatigable Niami Denmother explains it thus:

"You need to do level 100 or higher rush orders or work orders. (Only level 100+ have the new xp rewards on completion) *Currently* they're using Maldura recipes for the level 100 ones and not everyone bothered to get those recipes. This is temporary. They've cobbled together a leveling path for all the eager testers while they're still working on the real writs, and some other crafting goodness for us. We've got a month - they ARE making progress, we're just trying to progress faster than they can keep up."

Isn't it always the way? Players burn through content so much faster than developers can churn it out - even in Beta.

Sparkles are good

Meanwhile I'm working on my harvesting skills. It's all very well getting an instant Level 100 crafter
but unless you plan on buying all your mats from the broker (very expensive) you're going to need at least one maxed-out harvester to go and get the stuff.

Or maybe not. These days anyone can gather or mine or lumber or fish. The minimum skill levels were removed a while back. All that happens now, when you harvest a node well above your skill level, is that you fail a lot. Which is fine, because you also get a skill-up on most attempts, successful or otherwise.

So, you can go out and gather the mats you need if you have the patience and skill up while you're doing it. It's a monumentally slow process though. And you don't get any rares at all until your skill passes the former threshold.

I spent an hour this morning harvesting in Sinking Sands with my Level 100 Inquisitor who is also a Level 50 Carpenter. She was boosted from nothing to 100 and has never done much field work. With a cap of 500 based on her Adventure level most of her skills were in the 20s. After an hour they're all around 100 and she has enough mats to do a few levels on Rush Orders.

Too lazy even to get off the horse.

I could find out what the relevant trade questline is for her level and go do that. If there is one. I'm not sure there is. It depends who the tradeskill lead was when the game was going through the fifities. If it was Behn there'll be nothing.

If I did, though, she still wouldn't have the harvesting skills because most craft quests provide their own mats or don't use any. There's a whole separate Harvesting questline - several in fact - that I could do to catch up. I've written about that before. It's very good. Maybe I'll do that.

Only, harvesting is really relaxing. And fun. And satisfying. It is in most MMOs but especially so in EQ2. What's more, if you're catching up on a level 100 in older zones, everything's gone grey. The wildlife wanders past you and leaves you alone. You can drift.

That's the one I want!

Even in level-appropriate zones at 100, geared up from the last expansion, topped out with panda hand-me-downs and guarded by an equally well-turned-out mercenary, there are precious few interruptions to the zen-like calm brought by knocking chips off rocks.

I took my Berserker around Phantom Sea and Obulos Frontier for a couple of hours on Saturday, buffed up with an old potion I dug out of the bank that came from when I was still religiously doing my Crafting Apprentice quests every day.

With maxed skills, harvesting AAs and items and the boost my Berserker/Weaponsmith has a 27% chance per strike of getting a "Bountiful Harvest" (more stuff) and a 9% bonus to his chance of finding a Rare. It was Rares I was after, looking to supply my Warlock/Sage so he could upgrade his, the Necro's and the Inquisitor's 90s spells to Expert before the expansion lands.

I have no idea what to do with this but it sells for 84k Plat...

It was a very successful run. I came back with eighteen rares. Naturally, only two of them were the specific rares I needed but if necessary I can sell the wrong ones and buy the right ones with the proceeds. I won't though. I'll end up using them all.

I also bagged some rares I didn't know what to do with and after investigating them I realized I barely even understand EQ2's spell progression any more. Or the augment system. Or the various upgrading options for gear. It's so ferociously overwrought after fourteen years of continual development I'd be amazed if anyone knows what's going on.

And that's the fun of it. Come the new expansion it'll be all change again. I'm going to try and catch up then, in theory if not in practice. I can hardly wait!

All of which means this probably isn't the best time to be revisiting old systems and trying to remember how they work. I think I'll just go and hit some rocks. That, at least, never seems to change.

Gather Round, Everyone : EQ2, GW2, Vanguard

Just behind and to the right of the dapper young gaucho in the cluttered screenshot at the head of this post you'll see a curious green object in an ornate container. Were you able to examine it closely you'd discover it to be a plant. No, not just a plant - an entire garden.

The Obulus Frontier Garden is one of the rewards you get from doing the extensive crafting questline in EQ2's Kunark Ascending expansion. It's not the final reward, just a stage along the way, but it's a very useful and welcome one indeed.

Every day the owner of this rather unprepossessing green plant gets to harvest a rare material from its waxy leaves. As I understand it, the rare can be any of those required for the current highest-level recipes, all of which, in this expansion, derive from the same source, the Shadeweave Plant.

So far the prize I've plucked from the pot every day has been a Luclinite Nodule, the rare for jewelcrafting. The quest explicitly explains that the plant extracts and excretes harmful Luclinite from the soil around it in much the same way an oyster excretes a pearl. That might be fanciful but it certainly makes more sense than a plant spitting out a chunk of ore or an animal pelt.

As it happens I don't have a maxed-out Jewelcrafter capable of taking advantage of this daily bounty but so long as the Nodule is selling on the broker for almost 8,000 Platinum a pop then I'm not too concerned about that. If needs be I can sell my Luclinite and buy the Shadowstone Ore my weaponsmith uses with the proceeds, although I'd be the loser on that deal, what with Shadowstone trading at a heavy premium over Luclinite.

But this isn't intended as a commentary on the vagaries of the Norrathian economy. It's a response to something Telwyn at GamingSF posted recently. Most MMORPGs I've played have had some form of gathering and as Telwyn observes gathering is ideal for when you want something relaxing and "not too mentally taxing".

In many games there's really not much more to gathering than sidling up to an obvious lump of rock
or a glowing shrub and clicking. GW2 follows that exact model. Throw in a pleasing animation and a couple of sound effects and it's surprising how calming it can be.

ArenaNet, relying heavily as they do on their cash shop to keep food on the table and trainers on the kids' feet, gussy their gathering offer up with a variety of flash-bang-wallop harvesting tools. I have never wasted my money on any of them but I have often shared the misery fun of all that fizzing, whirring and yelping as people with more money than taste or patience let them loose on the node I'm currently attending.

We share nodes because GW2 enjoys non-competetive gathering. Every player gets to harvest every node. Vanguard, which had an excellent Gathering offer, went a stage further with a group gathering system that allowed players to combine their efforts for higher yields and a greater chance at rares. Vanguard also had a separate paper doll for harvesting clothes and tools, encouraging players to dress their Rakis and Goblins up like little peasants to till the land. Then, Vanguard had separate paper dolls for crafting, diplomacy and adventuring, too. It was a dressing up game par excellence.

EQ2 has a range of gathering tools and accoutrements of its own, as well as some Alternative Advancement (AA) skills. Mostly, they speed up the rate at which the gathering bar moves and increase the amount of materials you receive. Once you've become habituated to gathering with such advantages the basic skills of a fresh character seem sluggish in the extreme.

EQ2 also has something a lot rarer in the gathering sphere than mere tools and skills. As mentioned earlier it has gathering quests. It may be that other MMOs have them - I'm certain many have the odd few scattered around and, of course, plenty of regular quests require you to gather things along the way - but I struggle to think of any other MMO that has something that could, albeit not entirely without a little irony, be described to as a "Gathering Epic".

That, though, is how many players refer to the very lengthy sequence of quests offered by the exceptionally annoying brat Qho Augren. If you take him on at the earliest opportunity, this questline will span most of your leveling game, taking you from five to ninety-five as well as into frequent fantasies of child-murder.

I'm sorry, Mrs Augren, I haven't seen little Qho anywhere...

Personally I never found him that annoying. I've done the entire sequence once and most of it three or four times. It's a great way to pass a wet Sunday afternoon in March. It's not, by any means, the only gathering quest EQ2 has to offer either although I still think there could be more.

In fact, I think there could be a whole MMO based primarily around Gathering. Particularly if the developers were to roll in Gathering's sister activity, Collecting. Imagine an MMO set in a detailed virtual world, where instead of killing monsters, fighting demons or slaying dragons your character set out to acquire rare specimens, funding herself along the way by gathering more common yet saleable stock for various merchants and powers.

The entire panoply and arsenal of MMO tropes and devices could easily be adapted to such a milieu. Gear, items, skills, quests, storylines... There could even be a modicum of combat - gathering, after all, frequently includes skinning and butchering. Combat just wouldn't be the focus - more like a secondary skill...

...perhaps a little like Gathering is today. And then some bright developer would come up with the idea of adding Combat Gear. And skills. And some quests, too, because the minority of players who like combat pay their Sub or their Premium Membership too, don't they?

I see where this is going. Oh, well. I'd play it anyway.

Forging Ahead : EQ2

It's been a while since I spent a Sunday morning prospecting for rares. It used to be kind of a thing Chez Bhagpuss once upon a time. Many peaceful and relaxing hours drifted by among the ore nodes beneath Cliffs of Rujark or the root crops of Kerra Isle, Mrs Bhagpuss and I passing each other in opposite directions as we scoured the sands for beryllium or toxnettle.

One down, one to go.

The move to Tyria largely put paid to that. While GW2 has gathering of a kind it's a pale and feeble version by comparison and not something you'd want to spend hour after hour on.

EQ2 has always been a gatherer's dream. The whole process is deliciously complex, with a full range of items, consumables and gear available to enhance your character's effectiveness. Harvesting even has its own epic questlines complete with signature NPCs.

The nodes spit out their highly desirable rares just often enough to make the whole process feel worthwhile rather than a waste of valuable leisure time. The chime of discovery when one pops is less the ringing of a pavlovian bell than the sound of a shot sweetly struck in the middle of the bat.

Satisfying is what it is, frankly. There's nothing in MMOs quite like it, not at least since Vanguard shut up shop. Consequently, when I completed my Research on Containing Magical Gemstones and discovered that I'd need not one but two Arcannium (Arcanniums? Arcannii?) I found my heart flutter more in anticipation than anxiety.

My ore! Mine!!

Checking the broker quickly took the lazy option off the table. At the time of writing Arcannium is selling at close to 500 platinum a piece, which, for comparison, puts it in the same bracket as a successful SLR auction for a max level piece of Fabled gear. Ignore the jargon - just take it for granted that means it's a lot of money.

I confess (and it is a guilty confession) that the relatively recent addition of instant access to the Broker from anywhere that comes a perk of All Access Membership has led me into bad habits. To save myself a few minutes travel time I have been buying mats that previously I would at least have taken out of my own bank, mats that even if I hadn't mined or lumbered or gathered at the direct behest of the questgiver would at least, at some time in the past, have been dug or chopped or picked by me, personally.

Shopping was not an option this time. I had no choice but to flap my wings and go prospecting in Thalumbra. Because it was a Sunday morning and I was in no kind of rush, for once I took my time, stood back and had a think about the best way to go about this potentially time-consuming project. That was how I came to discover my AAs were up the spout.

EQ2 lore. It's an acquired taste.

A little out-of-game research reminded me I should have access to an AA ability that tracks harvesting nodes. Couldn't find it. Also I supposedly own a goblin that goes foraging for me, and unlike my old, trusty pack pony, he can forage rares. Couldn't find him either. And I should have at least a 6% bonus to rare harvests. Only had 1%.

How did we ever manage without?

Something was clearly awry. It took me twenty minutes of fiddling about in my AA window, reading tooltips and swearing to myself before I found the problem. I'd set all my AAs and spent all the points but I hadn't pressed the Commit button. They were notional not actual.

A key-press, a long channeling animation and a smart blow to my own forehead later and everything was as it should have been all along. I also received a string of suffix and prefix titles, almost all of them relating to adventuring, and had to re-cast all of my combat buffs so I wonder if I've been fighting without AAs all this time? If so I can't tell the difference!

My AAs now correctly set and working, a couple of +harvesting items swapped in for adventure gear and having swigged one of the Bountiful Harvest potions provided long ago by my much-neglected Othmir apprentice, I was running a 37% chance at a second pull per strike and an 8% bonus chance on pulling a rare. Nothing more I could think of doing so off I went.

The current, excellent, signature crafting questline for Terrors of Thalumbra is the work of Domino, EQ2's recently-returned Crafting Queen over the Water. Unlike some lesser lights, Domino has always been scrupulous in ensuring that a pure crafter, maxed in her trade but with next to no adventure experience or levels, can still complete the crafting quests safely.

Always knew this would come in handy

With the ablity to fly and carrying a variety of crafted stealth, invisibility and speed totems, plus the invaluable option to turn into a rock for twelve hours, granted by an earlier crafting reward, I'm sure that's possible even in the caverns of Thalumbra. It very much helps that the great majority of nodes are carefully placed out of agro range of the level 100+ creatures that skulk or squat or hover all around.

Even so, I'd rather be doing it with a full set of level 98 plate and a level 100 Mercenary to back me up. There were some disputes between my Berserker and a few cave locusts that came to blows. Also there was that time with the named one. Stinger, he was called, not entirely originally I feel, but entirely appropriately as it turned out. Had a nice upgrade for me, he did. Would kill again!

We're going to need a bigger swatter.

The RNG in EQ2 is no better than any of them. Everyone always thinks the odds are set against them when it comes to playing the numbers in MMOs. There are even people who believe that different characters (or classes or races) have different luck. Even if that were true, which it isn't, there's nothing you can do about it. You just have to get on with it.

It doesn't help when the particular ore you need comes from the sort of node that has two different rares, of course. That really does halve your chances of getting the one you want. Factoring that in I was expecting a few hours work but the RNG gods must have had a good breakfast because in less than an hour I had the two rares I needed. I also had three Lucites and a Glittervein. Pretty good for around fifty minutes work.

Remember, I'm a professional crafter. Please don't try this at home.

All that remained was a short flutter back to Maldura, the new city-zone that deserves a post of its own, and a session with The Forge of Brell. Brytthel warned me to be careful. You don't mess around at the forge of the god of smelting. When the reactions there say "Lethal" they aren't kidding. I'm ashamed (again) to admit I let my attention wander for a second. It's lucky I always have Visions of Madness up, that's all I'm saying.

I guess it'll have to do.

I took more care over the equally risky ritual conducted by Elenluelle and her coterie of moths. When it said Lethal that time I reacted appropriately. And fast. Turned out I should have been faster but that's another story and a spoiler too so let's not go there.

Let's go back to Mara instead and the distinctly unempathic Captain Ethan Dariani. He pays well, I'll say that much for him and not much more. Speak to him and that's the crafting signature quest completed.

Took about five or six hours all told, a good deal of which was traveling and gathering and all of which was excellent entertainment. Next comes the Adventure version in which I am betting I get to do what the trade-obsessed Captain wouldn't. I hope so, anyway.

As I was leaving another player arrived to hand in the quest and an achievement popped (for him, not me - we don't get Achievements for seeing other players hand in quests - well, not yet...). Out of curiosity I clicked on it and saw it was for completing both the the Craft and Adventure lines and now I know that comes with a gift I know I could put to good use.

Onward and downward for glory and reward! And fun. Let's not forget the fun.

Stop Twisting My Melon, Man! : EQ2

Miserable day outside. April showers? April steady downpour more like.

That's a real fruit. Who knew?

What could be more welcome on such a wet, grey day than a little harvesting? Gathering if you prefer. It's relaxing, soothing, and profitable. I like to gather, mine or harvest in all MMOs that allow it, which is most of them and I've always particularly enjoyed EQ2's implementation. Simple and elegant, there's a zen-like quality as you move from node to node, depleting each with a series of satisfying sounds and animations, occasionally (very occasionally) slavering at the Skinner Box reward of a Rare, signaled by a DING! worthy of Pavlov himself.

My semi-precious!

Rares in EQ2 have always represented money just lying on the ground. Perpetual revenue-generators for adventurers willing to take the trouble to skill-up their gathering skills, Rares represent a broker staple. Crafters can never have enough yet they don't want to spend the time, suffer terrible runs of luck with the RNG or just plain die too often to find all they need out in the field. Frequently some fad or bug pushes the price of a particular rare through the roof and so it is right now.

Who's the joker with the small change?

The recent update, although no full expansion, did bring two new levels for crafters as well as adventurers and along with the levels came new recipes requiring new harvests. We got a full new tier of harvests, including rares but according to EQ2Wire one of those rares, Osmium is bugged so that it drops 90% less often than it should. Since Osmium is used to make Level 91 and 92 Expert Level Mage spells and Fighter Combat Arts, and since you need to have scribed the Expert to get a Research Assistant to make you the Master version, and since not having the Master version of your new spells is like having the wrong knot in your school tie, this has not gone unnoticed.

Last night the cheapest Osmium on the broker was selling for at least 80 plat. I know, because I sold it. Today the cheapest is 102 plat. I'd undercut that if I had any more but after several hours zipping around Withered Lands on my trusty flying disc I still haven't turned one up.

Dice loaded

It's been a very pleasant day all the same. I completed a number of quests I'd forgotten about, acquired a pet Stormwing Whelp and found many Rares. Just no Osmium. The meditative trance did tend to suffer as various passing elementals, giant bugs or carnivorous plants attempted to rip my head off, but a powerful ratonga berserker laughs at such impertinences. Alright, squeaks.

Mines!

Not every would-be gatherer can shrug off the advances of a homicidal treant so easily, of course, and there have been many bitter complaints over the years about SoE reneging on their contract with crafters by putting all the nodes in the middle of packs of angry animals, where only adventurers could reach them.

I thought this would be the case with our latest top-end gathering zone, Withered Lands but I was surprised to find that nodes pop up in the safe areas around the Steles, where uncorrupted satyrs maintain small pockets of Tunare-sponsored green-lawned calm among the general corruption. All types of nodes spawn there and the areas appear to be discrete "fields", meaning that as one node is depleted another will spawn in the same area rather than beyond where the wild things are.

We Bought A Zoo

This means that any gatherer, regardless of his or her adventure level, can safely harvest in the Withered Lands. Well, you'd probably want to be able to fly, which would mean being a level 85 crafter, otherwise you might have some difficulty getting to one of the Steles intact. Or at all. You only need to get there once, though, since each Stele has a horse stop and once that's opened you have a free, invulnerable, automatic ride to and from the zone-in camp any time you need it.

I found more nodes faster in that safe spot than I found while roaming, if only because cutting up huge beetles with a sword takes quite a long time. Being able to gather safely in a final-tier zone is surprisingly generous and very welcome. It still isn't getting me any Osmium though.