How To Become A Tycoon In Neverness To Everness By Really Trying

It's been almost a week since I last posted anything about Neverness To Everness but rest assured I've been playing every day. Playing but not really getting anywhere...

I haven't been able to help noticing that everyone else, by which I mostly mean Malvaltar and Nimgimli but also literally every single person I ever see talking about the game when I google it or try to look something up, is way, way ahead of me. Everyone is Level 50. Or 60. The exact cap still seems a bit vaguely defined. 

Everyone has done a whole load of things I haven't done and quite a few of them seem to be things I haven't even heard of. I'm up to date with the main quest/story, which is a first for me in one of these games, but other than that I seem to be a long way behind.

Not that it matters. NTE isn't a competitive game. It isn't even an MMO and it makes absolutely no difference what pace anyone takes in a single-player game. There's no-one there to criticize or goad you along or wonder why you're so under-geared for your level and would you like some help?

So why was I bothered? Because my apartment is starting to feel a little cramped, what with that twelve-foot tall kewpie doll blocking the view and Mint wandering around in her nightie, sighing to herself, that's why. I already mentioned how I felt I had to buy her a bed of her own so she'd stop sleeping in mine and I wasn't exaggerating when I said there wasn't room for two beds on the upper deck. I can barely get to the stairs!

That's what started me wondering why I still only have the basic, starter apartment. Shouldn't I have the next one by now? So I began looking into it.

Access to housing, like most of the non-combat activities in the game, is controlled by your Tycoon level. That's a discrete progression system completely unconnected to you Hunter level. The two work independently and very differently.

Hunter is your basic MMO leveling path, a little bit more nuanced but still much the same process underneath. You quest, you kill stuff, you do dailies and you get xp which makes your level go up. For Tycoon, you have to meet specific criteria to complete each level. It's a literal tick-box exercise.

When I started playing NTE, I understood all that but somehow I'd mostly forgotten about it. I didn't particularly want my Hunter level to go up because all that seems to do is make the fights harder, which sends you scurrying around, trying to get the mats to upgrade your gear, just so you can get back to where you started. The traditional MMORPG gameplay loop, in other words. As for Tycoon level, that went up so naturally just through playing the game, I stopped paying any attention to it at all.

Which was why, after more than six weeks of regular play Flora was still only Tycoon Level 8. Enough get the next house, Eden Apartments, but having looked at the cost it seemed like it might be better to push through to Level 9 and buy the third,  Skyview Halls, instead. Eden costs 1m Fons but Skyview is only another 400k and Flora had more than 2.5m to burn.

(Of course it didn't occur to me until I started writing this that owning Eden Apartments might be a pre-requisite to buying Skyview. I probably should have thought of that. It's a common enough practice in games. Luckily, I just googled it and it seems skipping ahead is fine so long as you have the cash. Phew!)

Now I'd been encouraged to think about it at all, I was a bit puzzled why my Tycoon progress had stalled. It was very easy to find out. It's all laid out extremely clearly in game. I just hadn't bothered to look before.

It turned out I was being blocked by an incomplete Exploration Guide requirement. I'd barely noticed there were such things as Exploration Guides so it was hardly surprising I hadn't finished one. They're a sort of tick-list of stuff you can do in the game so I was one tick-list short of a tick-list.

The reason I hadn't already done everything necessary just by playing was mostly that a couple of the items on the list were so pointless I'd never thought they were worth wasting my time on. They were extremely easy, though, so knocking those off took not much longer than it took to find the location on the map and portal there.

As soon as that was done, I hit the big Level Up button and dinged Tycoon 9. Only the Level Up button was still glowing. I pressed it again and Ding! Tycoon Level 10!

Thanks to some very considerate game design, all the requirements for Tycoon are granted retrospectively. If you happen to have completed something on the Level 12 tick-list while you were still only level 6, you'll find it neatly crossed off the list when you get there. 

In that way I leapfrogged several levels on the way to Tycoon 16, which is where I had to stop for, as we'll see later, financial reasons. There were a few more Exploration Guide boxes to tick here and there along the way and I had to buy a motorbike to hit the "Own 3 Vehicles" qualification, a bike being by far the cheapest option just to get that box ticked. 

There were a number of requirements related to house decoration but of course I'd long since done all of those. I also had plenty of money which was fortunate because to be a Tycoon does demand a certain income.

The most interesting of all the asks was the Pink Paws Heist. Access to this is opens at Tycoon 10 and completing it at least once is a requirement for Tycoon 11.

Before I got the nod, I knew the event existed but I'd kind of decided I wasn't going to do it. Pink Paws is the bizarrely-named central bank in Hethereau and a Heist there sounded like a robbery, where you steal from the vaults. I didn't like the sound of that.

In a kind of throwback to my RPG days, I'd made up my mind Flora would not become a bank robber because it would be out of character, which is why I'd done nothing to find out more about the event after I knew it existed. Had I taken the trouble to investigate, I'd have learned the Pink Paws Heist isn't a robbery at all. It's perfectly legal. In fact it's sanctioned and run by the bank itself!

There's a whole backstory to it, albeit only sketched in outline by Chiz, who tells you all about it when you meet her in the bank lobby. It was apparently some media event run by a Streamer that went so well the Pink Paws board decided to stage regular reconstructions for publicity purposes. Or something. I wasn't taking notes.

It's fun, or it would be if there weren't sirens going off constantly. They're deafening! It's on a timer that gives you about nine minutes before something happens but what that might be I can't tell you because, since all I needed to do was complete the run to tick the box, I jumped into the ReRo Phone Box and teleported out at the earliest opportunity. 

I will be back, though. It's quite lucrative and I need the money. I finally hit the buffers at Tycoon Level 16 because the next level asks for more money than I've got. Or, I should say, than I've ever had. 

In another fine piece of game design, to level up as a Tycoon, you don't have to pay anyone any money, you just have to be able to prove you have it. Or have had it, at some point. The tick-box is for lifetime earnings and to reach the next level I need to have made another 450k or so. 

Looking ahead, it's pretty much all "Earn More Money" right the way to Tycoon 20. There are a few more Exploration ticks to get for Level 20 itself but otherwise Flora's already done everything that's going to be asked of her. 

The Tycoon ladder carries on past 20 but from there on it's locked for some reason. You can't even look at what you need to do until you ding 20 yourself. 

As for rewards or unlocks, there's Chiz herself at Level 18 and not a lot else. All five houses are unlocked already, although I can't afford the last two. 

Also unlocked is the Pawbes Rich List, a competitive table of who has the most money in the game. Uniquely in my experience, this includes both players and NPCs. I don't think it gets you anything other than bragging rights, a title and a fancy border round your name, which would seem to be of limited appeal in a single-player game.

I want Chiz, so that will motivate me to work on the next couple of levels. After that I guess I ought to make it to 20 to see what comes after. Yes, I could just look it up on the Wiki but I'm in no rush. 

What I really need to do is start thinking about which house I'm going to buy next and who I'm going to ask to come live in it with me. I'm thinking Lacrimosa would make a good flatmate. Or maybe Chiz, when she joins the team. 

I hear she's good at making money. That could come in handy. A tycoon always needs more money. 

Recursion To The Max

Now there's no more leveling to do, it's time to start filling out the many gaps in Mordita's character sheet so she can become the do-it-all character Conkers was. I did a fair bit of prep on that last year but there's a long way yet to go.

And it's complicated, not to say confusing, deciding what's essential, what's merely desirable and what's mostly irrelevant. One problem with bringing a new character in at the current end game (Solo end game, that is. Let's not get carried away.) is that by definition they weren't there for all the previous end-games, so whatever the point of doing those might have been, you've missed it. Haven't been there, haven't got the T-shirt. 

Every expansion comes with a bunch of features that require you, at minimum, finish the Signature quest-line to get the full benefits. Often there are side quests and other content you'd be expected to do as well, if you want to make sure you've got all the goodies. There could be skills and abilities and items and spells... all kinds of things you probably don't want to be without, not least because, when the devs are designing later content for subsequent expansions and updates, they may very well assume most people have them.

A surprising number remain relevant for years, while others are swept aside and forgotten. For example, there's a crafting quest in 2016's Kunark Ascending that gives you a buff that makes gathering materials very significantly quicker. You really wouldn't want to miss out on that, especially if you were used to having it on a previous character. It's like gathering treacle without it.  

On the other hand, there's not much point back-tracking to get the widget that lets you see Shadow Nodes and gather from them, much less spend the many hours needed to raise the skill. To everyone's relief, the deeply unpopular Shadow Prospecting from 2019's Blood of Luclin expansion never made it off the moon.

But you could if you wanted to. All of this stuff - indeed very nearly everything there ever has been in the game - is still there, waiting for anyone that feels they missed out. Some of it is worth doing for the fun of it, even if the rewards don't mean much any more. If you're just trying to catch a new main character up to where you left off with the previous one, though, you'll probably want to be a bit choosy.

The question is, where to start? There's a lot of quality of life stuff that isn't essential but that's exactly what I miss most, when I suddenly run into something that reminds me I don't have it. Like languages, for example. It's always a pain when you try to speak to an NPC you know has a quest you want, only to find you can't communicate with each other.

These days, you can just buy a book from an NPC to learn most languages but there are still a few you need to do some work for. The question is, which is which? I probably ought to take Mordita to the vendor and buy everything she hasn't already got, then compare her language skills with Conkers, my Berserker and make some notes on what's missing. Then I'd have to look up how to fill in the gaps.

It's some work, changing Mains in mid-stream, for sure. Not everyone enjoys the admin. Luckily I do. Mostly.

In theory, QoL improvements ought to take second place to combat efficiency but as I've been saying all along, as a Necromancer I'm suddenly finding the solo content a lot easier than I was used to, back when I was playing a Berserker. If she's winning all her fights easily already, is the effort involved in upgrading all her spells going to be worth it?

And let's not pretend it wouldn't be an effort. I got my Sage, Barnabus, out yesterday to see how many Expert spells he’d have to make and how many rares it would take. I make it thirty-three spells. Every spell requires two rares these days, so sixty-six rares.

The rares for cloth caster spells are Flowfall Vines. There are enough on the Broker to make everything but they go for about 25m plat each so that would be 1.65b plat for the lot. Hyperinflation is rampant in Norrath these days. It's true Mord did have a windfall recently. She got a key Inquisitor Master as a boss drop and sold it for 1.7b. I wasn't planning to spend it all on crafting mats, though.

The preferable alternative is to gather the vines myself but they call them rares for a reason. Last session, I spent about three-quarters of an hour gathering and I got five, which was honestly a pretty impressive haul. Maybe I could average six an hour if I was really lucky, so eleven hours of gathering, but realistically I'd expect it to take more like double that long.

Which is fine. I like gathering. It's restful. I generally don't listen to the radio or podcasts any more when I play games but gathering mats is made for it. If it was June and the cricket was on...

If I was going to do it seriously, of course, I'd need to get Mordita's Rare Harvest Chance stat as high as possible. And her Bountiful Harvest stat as well. She already has the AAs for both but there's gear with boosts she and her mount could be wearing that they're not. 

Well, the mount has some, now. I had Barnabus make a saddle and hackamore with relevant stats since I already had him working. He, or any of my high-level crafters, could make other items, too. The Artisan pieces, at least. Any crafter of high enough level can do that, always assuming they've scribed the recipes. There are consumables too...

Except the problem with the whole plan is that a lot of Mordita's existing spells are already upgraded to a degree that means the Experts from the new spell books, which I just got Barney to buy because he didn't do much in the last expansion or three either, won't actually be upgrades for Mordita. Although I haven't been playing her as much as Conkers these last few years, I have been keeping up with her free, time-gated spell progression and as a result all her important spells from before the level cap went up (And a lot of the less-important ones, too.) are Master level or above. 

That means I'd be gearing Mordita up so she could get mats so Barney could make her upgrades she doesn't really need, which wouldn't upgrade the spells she already has anyway. And yet I do still need to do it at some point, if not right away.

She may not need those upgrades now, but if I keep on passively upgrading her old spells without replacing them, at some point they'll be maxed but still be too low to be really effective. Every expansion comes with power creep as a built-in feature, whether you want it or not. 

I could certainly leave it until the next expansion, later this year. That won't come with an increase in the cap so it should be fine. If I do, though, in two years, when the cap goes up, I'll almost certainly need to swap to at least the new spells that came with this expansion and if I make the Experts for those now, I'll have a year and a half to upgrade them with the passive system, meaning they'll be more powerful than the Expert-level spells in the expansion-after-next.

Yeah. Makes my head hurt, too. I think the percentage move is just to keep gathering every time I'm out doing anything, pass the vines to Barney and have him make the key Experts piecemeal as and when I have the mats. There are probably only a dozen or so spells that really need to be kept at peak effectiveness. That should be easy enough.

Of course, that's just for one character. I have a whole lot more clamoring for attention. At one point I had half a dozen at cap although that was when leveling took hours not weeks. And the above examples are just a few of the things that need to be done to get Mordita to where she could be. Where Conkers already was before I swapped over. 

There are all those adornment slots that could be improved for a start. She could make the Adornments herself if she did the dailies to skill up. And she ought to max her Tinkering, too. I think Transmuting is already done just from clearing the many unwanted drops from doing the Overland dailies and Weeklies and the instances in the last update. Come to think of it, she only did one of those because the rest were Level 135 Required. I guess I should run her through the rest at least once, just to see what's there...

And so it goes. On and on and ever on. But to what end? 

Don't look at me. After more than twenty years I think it's clear the only reason I'm doing any of this is so I can keep on doing more of it. I'm seeing recursion everywhere these days.

I kinda like it...

Ding 135!

Geez! It took long enough, didn't it? At around 11.30 am on Saturday 11 April my Necromancer, Mordita  finally dinged 135, the level cap in EverQuest II. It only took four months (To the day, near enough.) What is this? 2004?

Well, no, I guess not. In 2004 the level cap in EQII was 50, I think. Pretty sure. Wait, let me check... Yep, that's right. MMORPGs usually capped at fifty on launch back in those days. No idea why. What's so special about fifty? Okay, my favorite number is and has always been five so fifty is cool with me but I don't think they did it just to please me.

As of the release of the latest expansion, Rage of Cthurath, in December last year, the cap went from 130 to 135. Remember when expansions went up in tens? That's been a while...

Leveling has changed so much over the years. In all games but let's stick with EQII. At launch it was slow as hell but still a lot faster than we'd been used to in EverQuest so we weren't complaining. Much. It stayed like that for a long time or at least that's how I remember it. 

To get xp in those days, you could do quests or kill mobs or mix it up and do a bit of both. Your choice. Also, you could hand in Collections. They gave big xp and the collectables were tradable so people would hoard them up and then hand them in on the day the new expansion arrived. That way, you could rack up the new levels in minutes. 

Later, after chronomagic came in, you could mentor down and solo dungeons for a level or two a run. Or have a high-level friend drag you round on follow. Or pay someone to power-level you that way, if you didn't have any friends. And then came mercenaries so you could get an NPC to do it and pay them peanuts in plat. That pretty much put the power-leveling professionals out of business.

There were loads and loads of ways to tear through the levels at little effort and no risk. For a while it was all about the Dungeon Maker and I'm sure there were other exploits tricks I've forgotten. Pick one, slam down an xp potion, get your head down, knock the levels out in a few hours. It was hella fun for the first hour or two, then not so much, then dull enough to have you screaming. Still, we all did it, even if we complained about it all the time, too.

This is where I get to quote Joni Mitchell, isn't it? Well, you never do, do you? Who'd have thought I'd be gazing back wistfully at those Sunday afternoons going round and round and round Chelsith or Sebilis? Round and round and round until my teeth ached. Halcyon days...

Well, they put a stop to that around the time the cap hit 100. For our own good, I think they said it was. Oh, they didn't do anything as crass as ban it. They just started counting the xp needed to level in numbers orders of magnitude larger than anything you could get in old content. 

Suddenly, killing mobs  got you absolutely nowhere. Mobs still gave xp, sure, but it was like trying to fill a swimming pool with an eye-dropper. From then on about the only way to gain enough xp to make a difference was to do quests. 

And for a while that was slow but not so slow you'd really hate it. Constrictive and coercive, yes, but not ineffective. New normal, all fine. 

Then in one expansion, I can't remember exactly which, the new quests started filling the entire bar in two or three hand-ins. Instead of taking a couple of weeks to hit the cap it took a couple of days. Maybe a couple of hours. Seriously, it was that fast.

Leveling to the cap in a new expansion turned into something so trivial there didn't seem much point in having levels at all. Some people liked it, particularly the ones with big stables of alts. Others hated it. Either way, as always, we all got used to it.

And then they took it away again. A couple of expansions back it switched back, without warning, to little dribbles. Actually, I think the dribbles are bigger than they were before the surge but it's like when you were a student, isn't it? A room in a shared house seemed fine but once you get used to living in your own apartment, who wants to go back? 

Only it's not like anyone gave us a choice. These days, there's about one way to get xp in the current expansion and that's do the damn quests. Nothing else makes a dent in the bar. Hah! Dent? Doesn't move a pixel!

And it's not just any quests, either. Do the Signature line, the core story, the MSQ if you will. That's where all the xp is. But don't expect it to be enough. I finished the Sig and it left me about 70% of a level short. It's taken me about as long to cobble together enough xp to finish that last bar as it took me to do the previous four levels.

OMG was it bad! Repeatable quests. Don't you hate them? I hate them! I've always hated them. This is where I get to quote David Byrne. Yes, that line from Psycho Killer. Of course, that line. And well he may ask! Why? Eh? EH?!

I've been grudgingly chipping away at that last 70% for what feels like weeks now. Okay, sure, I could have done the whole thing in a day or two, but only if I could have stood it, which I couldn't. I couldn't even bring myself to do a couple of the damn repeatable quests each day.

I did manage a couple every few days though and the singularity the level cap was getting nearer. Slowly. Horribly slowly. 

And then today it finally occurred to me to check if I really had done all the non-repeatable quests. 

It took me about three-quarters of an hour. Just to check, that is. The quest structure is so convoluted now. Who knows what's anywhere any more? I went through my Active Quests, my Completed Quests, I compared them to the Timeline on the Wiki... In the end it was only by going through the Quest Achievements, something I almost never look at, that I worked out there was a ton of stuff I hadn't done. 

I'm really out of the loop on Achievements. They spent so many years being completely useless for anything other than being able to say you'd done them that I stopped paying attention to them altogether. Which meant I'd missed it when they turned into something useful, not to say necessary. 

They all come with rewards now. Mostly Status but Status is the new Platinum. Hyper-inflation made NPCs stop asking for money. Now all they care about is how famous you are. Status buys you everything.

Anyway, that's probably a post of its own. The important thing is, I was going through the Quest Achievements to see what I might have missed and it cued me into a whole bunch of side-quests I didn't have and among those there turned out to be several where the xp wasn't the pitiful 1.2% of the repeatables but a big, chunky ten per cent!

I spent a happy hour or so finding and finishing those and suddenly there I was, just a couple of per cent from capping. Just right for one last heave...

A couple of repeatables and over the line! Ding 135! There's an Achievement for that, too.

And now I don't have to think about it again until December 2027. There won't be level cap increase this year. It's fallow.

Of course, I do have all those alts. But they can wait until I'm in the mood. Which might be never, now I've found the Necro Hack for EZMode. I really only need them to keep their crafting up to date and thank god tradeskill levels are still relatively easy to get. (Shhh! for gawd's sake...)

Of course, hitting the cap just means the real work begins. Every piece of gear needs replacing and every spell upgrading. Plus all those Achievements and Collections that I'm starting to realize are core content these days, not optional extras like they used to be. 

Only now I can take it all at my own pace and enjoy the experience. 

Free! Free at last. Free!

For now...

And There Shall Come A Reckoning...

All this talk about a new EverQuest game is fine and quite possibly dandy but what about the old ones? The ones I'm already playing?

Well, my good intentions for a return to OG EQ came to not very much, as I expected they might. I did at least get the game installed on the new(ish) PC and patched up, so that's something. Better yet, I logged in and claimed my free Level 115 but then I had no clue what to do with her, so after I'd opened all the goodie bags and gotten her dressed, I logged out again.

As for leveling up a new character with the big xp bonus, that hasn't happened and now it's too late. Not that I'm bothered. If yesterday's unexpected announcement means anything at all, I'd guess it signals the end of leveling random characters on live EverQuest servers just for the hell of it. 

I mean, why would you do it the hard way, when you know there's a version of the game coming later this year that's designed specifically to make it easy? One thing I haven't seen discussed yet is what kind of impact EverQuest Legends is going to have on either the regular, "Live" game or the TLE servers but I'd bet it's going to be considerable.

The Game Jawn folks have been quite clear about how they're targeting an audience of people who either last played EQ many years ago or who've never played it at all - that's what all the quality of life improvements and UI tweaks are for - but it seems highly likely they'll also pull in a lot of people who still play. Maybe most of those will only come for a quick look-see before going back to their regular servers - sunk cost and all that - but there's still bound to be a hell of a population dip in the short term, at least. And who knows how long it'll last? 

 

Presumably all of that is factored into the agreement between GJ and Darkpaw. I guess if EG7 get a big enough cut of that sweet subscription money, they won't really mind that some of it is coming from people who might otherwise be giving it to them direct. Then again, they did sell all those thousands and thousands of Lifetime Subscriptions a few years back. I bet the Accounts Dept. will be more than happy if some of those loyal customers move over to the Game Jawn servers. At least that way they'll get something out of them again.

So much for EverQuest. What about EverQuest II? That's the game I'm actually playing, isn't it? 

Yep. It sure is. I played some EQII yesterday and some more this morning.

It's been lost in the noise of the EQL publicity blitz but EQII just got its big Spring Game Update. It's called Gerion's Reckoning and plotwise it follows directly on from the Signature Questline in the expansion. That did end somewhat abruptly. I almost expected a big To Be Continued sign to appear, only I thought we'd have to wait for the next expansion, not see it start up again just three months later.

Here's a summary of what's in the GU:

•        4 New Dungeons with Solo and Heroic Content
•        1 New Untold Heroic Dungeon 
•        4 New Tier 3 Raid Dungeons 
•        20 New missions 
•        10 New collections 
•        Shiny Critter Collections 
•        9 New Adventure Quests 
•        New Overseer Season 8  

If you want more detail, like the names of the dungeons, which won't mean anything to anyone who doesn't play (And, frankly, not a lot to most people that do.) it's all at the link above.

It occurs to me as I write this that I don't even know who Gerion is, let alone what's being reckoned. Does it matter? I doubt it. I did a whole quest yesterday where I barely understood one word in three of the extensive dialog, most of which seemed to be names of places, people and things I'd never heard of - and I've been playing this game since there was a game to play! Who can keep track of all these names? Who even tries?

Ahem. Getting back on track...

I was looking forward to the GU because I thought the new quests might be enough to get me over the line to Level 135, the expansion cap. I still have half a level to go and I was very keen to avoid having to do another couple of dozen tedious repeatable quests at 2% a pop to get there.  

Things looked bad on that front when I saw the update came with a caveat:

 "The content in Gerion’s Reckoning is for adventure level 135 characters." 

I took that to mean questgivers wouldn't even talk to me until I dinged 135, which has certainly been the case in other games I've played and probably in this one, too, although I can't actually remember for certain. Still, might as well go make sure.

My fears seemed to be confirmed when I zoned into Yon Gorroth, the opening zone of the expansion and there were no new quest-markers on the map. Luckily, I didn't give up right away. Instead, I went to check the update notes and the wiki and it was then I realized there aren't any new quests in Yon Gorroth anyway.

Button grayed-out because my Journal was full, not because I wasn't 135 yet. Phew!

I checked the wiki and got the name of a questgiver in The Unknown. Then I went to see if he'd talk to me. At first things looked bleak. He wasn't turning up on the map as a flashing feather. Bad omen. 

Luckily, once again I didn't give up. I flew over to see him in person and it turned out he'd just been too far away for the map to show he was looking for help.

I got the quest from him. He was fine with me not being 135 yet. He gave me a whole lot of verbiage about something I'd already done for him, which I'd completely forgotten, then he sent me to one of the new instances to do him some more favors.

He gave me a specific location but obviously I couldn't remember where it was was so that took some more research. Eventually I found the entrance, way off some rocky island, and in I went.

Now, here's the good part. Necromancers are awesome! I believe the class doesn't have a great reputation just now but that'll be from raiders and raiders have no clue how real people live. I can tell you that compared to playing a Berserker, soloing a Necro is EZ-Mode.

I'm glad Mord remembers because I sure don't.

Usually I like to have the wiki open when I do a new instance so I can at least check which resists I need for which bosses and whether there are any special tricks I need to look out for. It's generally possible to figure all of that out from first principles but doing it the hard way often takes a few deaths or all afternoon. Occasionally both.

Either the first instance is very easy or my Necro is at least an order of magnitude more capable than my Berserker ever was. I just treated all five bosses in the instance as Tank&Spank and all of them died in 60-90 seconds. If they had any clever tricks, I missed them.

My Necro didn't die at all although she bloody would have if she'd relied on my Mercenary to heal her. He is so slow to pull the trigger on the big heals! Fortunately, Mordita can do a pretty bang-up job of healing herself, so that's what she did. 

As for her pet, Midnight, he still seems to be almost completely indestructible. She has great heals for him, too, but since he's at 100% health about 95% of the time, she rarely needs them. On one boss I think I saw him lose about 5% health, just for a second or two, but that was about it.

The instance was fun, which was just as well because I had to do it twice. The first time, I killed the final boss before I finished one of the quests and it turned out the final step of that quest was to kill the boss I'd just killed. That's another reason I always like to read the wiki first.

I finished there yesterday and today I came back, reset the dungeon and did it again, even faster. Then I came out and went back to the questgiver and did the hand-in and guess how much xp I got? Two fucking per cent!

Yes, the same as for a repeatable quest where you just pick some grass and click on a few nests. A quest that takes maybe five minutes including travel time versus clearing an entire dungeon with five bosses. Same reward. Does that seem fair to you?

Okay, the bosses all drop gear that's an upgrade to anything I'm wearing plus a bunch of other stuff worth having so it's not like it was a total waste of time but still. 2%!

All of which means I guess I'll be grinding those repeatables after all. I need another forty per cent of Level 134 so that's twenty of the damn things. I might just do one or two a day and let it take another month. It's not like being 135 is going to make much of a difference to anything...

Oh, wait... yes it will! All that gear the bosses dropped? That I said was upgrades for Mordita? Well, it would be if she could wear it. It's all Level 135 Required. 

You can't even add the shinies you pick up in the instance to their their collections if you aren't at the cap because those are level-locked too! It makes the whole Hot Zone - Bonus Shinies thing that popped up the second time around feel like more like a prank than a perk.

Such is the life of an EQII player. I should be used to it by now. 

When's EQ Legends coming out again? 

One Thing, Then Another

What I wanted to write today was a review of the first season of Arcane, which I finished watching last night. Bit late but still...

That, however, requires some time and thought and I have, if I'm lucky, about an hour to get this post written, edited and published. So that's not going to happen.

I will spoil my own future review, should it ever come to be, by saying I found Arcane to be one of the most impressive animated series I have ever seen. And I've seen a few. The animation itself is quite possibly the most detailed, fluent and expressive I've ever seen outside of a cinema or for that matter inside and the script was pretty damn fine, too. Not to mention the voice acting.

Better stop before I really get into it. I just wanted to say it was magnificent and I'm an idiot for not watching it when it came out. Maybe I'll save the full review for when I've seen the second season, although that could be a while. I need a breather after the emotional beating the first one gave me before I get back on that particular horse.  

I don't want to skip a posting day just because I can't write the post I wanted to, though. I'm aiming for 300 posts for the calendar year, which means I have to come up with ten in the next nine days. The Advent Calendar has me covered for three so it's seven in nine but of those nine I'm working three and I generally don't work and post so it's really seven in six. 

Can't afford to skip a day, then. Hence this half-assed excuse for a post.

One card any games blogger can always play is the good old "What I've Been Playing" number. In my case, that'd be EverQuest II. Quite a bit of it, in fact.

Enough that my Sage is now halfway through Level 134. The cap is 135 so he's nearly there.

He would actually be there already if it wasn't for the shameless time-gating. I'm not just talking about the reputation grind, the details of which I laid out a week ago. I got that done in about four days by doing the three-hourly quest once in the morning and again in the evening each day, much the same as I used to do the Overseer missions. 

With that finished, I thought it would be back to regular questing until I got to the end of the Signature quest and hit the cap. I was half right.

There's no more time-gated content within the questline itself. The problem is that there isn't much more questing at all. It took me one more session to finish it all. 

It was fun. I enjoyed it. I have no complaints about the quality. It's the quantity I'm not so pleased with.

When my Sage reached the end of the Tradeskill Signature, he was still some distance from the cap. It took him to the very beginning of Level 133. It also gave him a Familiar, an Advanced Spell Book with some of the new recipes and granted him license to fly in the two opening zones of the new expansion. 

All of which is very nice but it's not the end. He still needs two more books and the power of flight in the third zone and for all of those he has to be Level 135. So how is he supposed to get there?

By doing time-gated, repeatable quests, of course! There's a single quest available and it has an eighteen-hour refresh. That's a lot more manageable than the three hour refreshes of the last one but also less amenable to shrinkage by super-human effort (Aka Obsessive and Unhealthy Gameplay.)

Putting a positive spin on it

On the plus side, the quests are very easy and the xp is substantial. If he'd bothered to pop a potion before handing them in, he'd be 135 already. I wasn't in that much of a hurry so I left it until today to do that. He's now one more boosted hand-in away from the Big Ding, which should come... let me see... I did the hand-in around two o'clock this afternoon so... eighteen hours... hmmm... breakfast time tomorrow.

At that point he'll be able to buy the other two recipe books from the vendor in The Unknown and fly anywhere he fancies. Then he's going to need an unconscinable amount of rares for all the Expert spells he'll have to craft for himself, Mordita the Necromancer and possibly the Inquisitor and the Wizard, too. If I have any sense, which is a debatable point, I'll take him through the Adventure Signature line first, so he's robust enough to do his own foraging in the new lands. Otherwise he'll have to use the silly magic hand and that's soooo sloooow....

The issue with the Adventuring Signature is the speed of leveling. Mordita is on the final stage now and once again I have to say it's been an entertaining story with enjoyable gameplay. I'll maybe do a proper write-up on it when I've finished. She just has one instance left, according to the wiki. It should only take her another hour or so.

And then she'll be right around where the Sage was at the same stage, I think. About two levels shy of the cap. Only I don't think Adventurers get a nice little 18-hour repeatable that gives half a level every time you hand it in. I think what they get is a whole load of side-quests, repeatables and collections that each net maybe 4% of a level. 

I could be wrong. I hope I am. I guess I'll find out when I get there. I fear it could be a while before Mordita caps out, though, and if Barnabus is going to do it too, he has at least a dozen or so hours ahead of him to get to where she is.

I said it was entertaining. I didn't say it made sense.

Which, I suppose, is the standard, intended, expected gameplay of an MMORPG. After all these years of going on about how much I like leveling and how the journey is the best part, blah blah blah, I can hardly complain if I don't get given my five new levels in the first five minutes, can I?

Except there were several expansions where that was pretty much what happened. Okay, not five minutes, but fast. The questline gave you so much xp you were capped long before you got to the end of it. 

And I liked that.  It was a great example of giving someone what they want not what they ask for. If they'd done a poll in advance, asking if I wanted to level faster, I bet I'd have said no. But they didn't ask. They just did it. And it turned out that was what I wanted, even if I didn't know it.

And then, a couple of expansions ago, the whole thing went into reverse and then some. We didn't even go back to how it was before, when the main questline in an expansion would take a good, long while but you'd come out the end of it there or thereabouts at the cap.

Instead, the current model has you still in the middle of leveling up when the story reaches its conclusion. After which you have to cobble together whatever sources of extra xp you can find to make up the difference. There's always enough, somewhere, but you have to go look for it. Or in my case read a guide.

These things change all the time, of course. If they don't, all the complaints are about how stale and repetitive the expansions are getting. If they do, it's all "Why try to fix something that wasn't broken?" There's no winning with MMO veterans. 

For all that, I think this is a pretty good expansion so far. I can quite easily imagine taking multiple characters through it over the course of the year. And we get a pass on leveling for the next one with the bi-annual rise in Level Cap, so really I have two years to bring everyone up to speed.

Always assuming, that is, that there is another EQII expansion in 2026. And 2027. If I had to bet on it, I'd bet there will be but I wouldn't bet my shirt, let alone my house. 

I should probably just be grateful we're getting expansions at all and stop nitpicking.

The Best Thing About Banging Your Head Against A Wall

Finally!

Finally!!

Seriously, do you realize how long this has taken? Six months! Half a year!

I started back in April  and I've been at it continually, without a break, ever since. I may have missed a couple days but that's all.

I posted about it in June,  twice, and again in September. I've mentioned it in passing a few times, too.

As I said back in April, I was never sure how far I'd  have to go. The messaging both in and out of game is confusing. There's an Achievement for reaching Tier 8, the text of which reads:

That does strongly suggest there's a Season 8. Or maybe there will be, one day. Who knows?

Well, I do now. I have the Achievement for reaching 70. Look, here it is!

It's in the same panel in Achievements as the other one

Does that mean I have both Achievements now? And why, if I have 21/39 in that category, does the panel only show four of them? And why those four? 

Does anyone understand how Achievements in EverQuest II work? I never have.

Having finally, at last, dinged 70, though, I can say for absolute certain that there is currently no Tier 8. 

I had a few extra completed missions left to hand in when I dinged. I was unreasonably excited to see if that thing would happen that's happened before, where levels ending in a zero go ten times as fast as all the rest. I was hoping the handful of missions I was about to hand in would take me all the way to 71, which is where you have to be to unlock Season 8. 

As it tells you, right there in the Achievement. Except for some reason they chose not to capitalize season. Which is weird.

Yes, well, it didn't happen. I hit Complete for the remaining missions and nothing happened. 

Alright, something happened, as in I got the rewards, but I didn't get the big xp I was hoping for. 

I didn't get any xp. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Nil. None.

I suppose, technically, there was xp. It just didn't have anywhere to go. The bar does not move because there's nowhere for the bar to move to. Tier 8 is a lie.

In fact, if you mouse over the bar, it tells you so, in extremely small print.

And that's a good thing. A really good thing. I was dreading having to another ten levels before I got to the current cap, which obviously I would have needed to do before I could have started on the next set of levels that come with the new expansion. 

If, that is, there are any. Every year since the feature was added it's been mentioned in the promotional material for the annual expansion. This year, not a word.

I could log onto the Rage of Cthurath beta server and check, I suppose. Seems like a bit of a wasted effort, though. It's only a week and a half until I get to play it for real. I'm not that desperate to find out.

Whether there's a new season or not, at least I've achieved my goal. I said I wanted to be at the cap by the time the expansion arrived and now I am. Whether it'll do me any good is another matter.

There was a time when the rewards were well worth having. I'm not convinced that's the case any more. I have more boosts and accelerators and potions and temporary augments and extra barding slots than I'm ever going to use. The gear probably won't be any better than what's in the Tishan's Box and definitely no better than the quest rewards that will come with the first day's play. 

As for the Mercenary tokens, the one thing I really would have liked to have received from the tier I've just finished, I never saw a single one. They're in the list of possible rewards but they just never drop. 

It's going to be very interesting to see what the rewards are like for Tier 8, if there is one

Even if there is, though, the quality of the rewards won't really matter. Even if they're awful, I'm still going to have to do the Missions every day. If I don't and then they change things for the 2026 expansion, or the 2027, and suddenly the rewards are good again, I'd have to go through another six months of this.

Never again!

Yes, I know it's only a few minutes every day. I know it's not worth getting worked up about. But do you know what the best part of dinging 70 today was?

Realizing I didn't have to pick another set of goddam Overseer Missions for almost two weeks!

Oh, There You Are!

This is one of those days when I wouldn't normally be posting so I don't feel too bad about popping up a few screenshots and a couple of paragraphs on something I just posted about yesterday. In fact, in normal (Read: Not Blaugust.) circumstances I'd probably just have made this an edit to Saturday's post but why waste the opportunity to carve another notch on the Blaugust tally-stick?

It probably won't surprise anyone who's ever played an MMORPG to hear that no sooner had I complained about how I couldn't find Merchant Samwe to finish a quest, or Merchant somebody-or-other to buy my missing Level 1 to 5 Magician spells, the moment I logged back into EQOA I found both of them pretty much immediately.

Samwe, it turns out, is exactly where the Prima Guide map says he is, except for one vital fact they neglected to mention: he's at the top of a tower. It seems the z-axis differential was enough to occlude his presence from showing up on Right Button targeting until I was actually in the room next to him!

I'd logged out in pretty much the spot where he was meant to be and as soon as I logged in and had another look around, I noticed a ramp going up. Ramps are really hard to navigate with a controller (Well, for me...) so I haven't been exploring the upper stories much but once I spotted that ramp I would have bet money he was going to be at the top and he was. 

He tried to sucker me into buying the wrong spring by putting a gold one in his visible inventory and making me scrol down to find the correct, copper one but I'm wise to those sorts of gnomish tricks.

I bought the spring, which was the last thing I needed for the quest, then trotted back into Klick (Which I notice I have been spelling wrong up to now. It has a "C" in it.) I did the hand in, which got me 17k XP and a new staff, a huge upgrade to the one I'd been using.

In one of the screenshots here you can see someone by the name of Starcrusher talking about the class quests. He was complaining about the inaccuracy of such online information on the class quests as he'd been able to find and also that he hadn't even wanted to do the quests in the first place but his guild had told him they were essential. Everyone agreed with both propositions - the info is hard to find but you have to do them anyway. I'm assuming that's for the gear they give, which certainly seems nice to me.

Those class quests had also given me my only spells so far, a grand total of three. And one of those was Return Home, which barely counts. I was pretty desperate for more, particularly my pet spells, without which a gnome can hardly claim to be a Magician, but I looked at all the vendors in the caster guilds the other day and the lowest-level Magician spells I found were in the thirties.

I must have missed one because after the hand-in I had another look and found the right vendor almost straight away. She also tried to play the "scroll down" trick but I wasn't having any of it. I scrolled down until I found this:

She had several new spell scrolls for me including the Earth and Water pets and the pet buff and heal. I bought everything. The good thing about having to wait so long and having to kill so many mobs for quests and XP is that I had plenty of money from selling body parts. 

I scribed all my spells and then memmed them and in doing so finally figured out how to set up my hot bars and select the spells I want to cast. No more accidentally returning home when I'm trying to kill something. 

Then I summoned my Water Elementaling, buffed him and took him out to kill stuff. The pet models are excellent. A lot better than the basic starter Mage pets in EverQuest. Or EverQuest II for that matter. The water pet is a big, floating globe of water with a skull in the middle. Makes some weird noises, too.

The spell effects are also excellent but that is something EQ got right. I'm not sure if many people who haven't played would know but EQ spell effects are ridiculously spectacular for a game of its vintage and they always have been. It's like a bunch of fireworks going off in a neon striplight factory sometimes and that's just when people are buffing.

Anyway, I now have a pet and a staff and a new Level 5 quest to go kill some Mindwhippers, whatever they are. My guildmaster says I should team up with other apprentices to do it. Which, of course, I am not going to do. If they're too tough I'll just grind levels until they're not.

It's so nice to be playing a game where that's an option again... 

The Winds Of Mysterious Fortune Blow Me Back To WoW

As I suggested yesterday, I'm not invested enough in any particular MMORPG just now to have a reliable, ready-to-use supply of incidents, ideas and opinions on hand to fill three or four posts a week. It's happened before and no doubt it will happen again. Luckily, I have a well-tested workaround for times like these. 

Actually, I have more than one, this not being my first rodeo as the saying goes (Although if it was really a rodeo then it most definitely would be my first, so that's a weird thing to be benchmarking against...) For today's post I'm combining two methods in a belt-and-braces stylee (And again, who even wears braces these days? Clowns and Jacob Rees-Mogg and that's about it.). 

First, there's the good old "Copy what everyone else is doing" plan, sometimes given a positive spin as "building community" but just as easily defined as pinching ideas from other blogs. In this case, though, the idea I'm pinching is so old that, if it was a folk song, it would have (Trad.) after the title. It's picking up an old game and complaining about how it's too hard/easy/annoying or just plain not as good as it used to be. That one always delivers.

"Incompatible" with what?

There's not really much point trying to build up any suspense by waiting until paragraph four to reveal the name of the game because literally everyone who ever reads this will already know from the picture at the top of the post that it's World of Warcraft. I hadn't really been thinking of going back until I read two posts in quick succession, where Shintar and Redbeard both happened to be talking about their recent experiences in Retail, playing low-levels after being away for a while. 

I won't lie. It was actually Shintar's mention of a levelling event that swung it. I am very much not one of those people who find leveling in Retail too fast. I generally don't find it fast at all, probably for exactly the reasons Shintar outlines (Try it on a character with no Heirlooms and no help from any other characters on the same account some day and see how fast you find it.) Plus I always like events where good loot drops like leaves in the fall.

Both of them play WoW regularly although Redbeard pretty much sticks to Classic these days and Shintar, by her own account, bounces between Classic and Retail. I can't actually remember when I last played either. 

Okay, that's not strictly true. I do remember when I last played Classic, or I can soon look it up. It was right when the big scandal broke and the boycott started. I know because that was what decided me not to renew my sub.

When was that, anyway? My God! It was July 2021! Four years ago! Seems like... well, two years ago, at least. And it turns out I have played Classic again since then because there was a free weekend  almost exactly a year ago and I had a go at that. I'd totally forgotten about it.

As far as I can tell, though, I really haven't logged into Retail for nearly four years. My Battlenet client was obsolete. Had to download a new one. Then I had a 56GB patch to install, which I was hoping was going to be one of those new-fangled ones where, after the digital dust settles, it turns out only a fraction of it was new data. 

Don't look at me like that. I don't know who you are!

Sadly, not this time. It was the full fifty-six gigs and now the drive I have WoW running on is in the red. Probably going to need to do something about that so thanks for that, Blizz. (Mandatory unjustified sarcastic remark quota fulfilled - minimum one per comeback post; no maximum.)

I had lunch while that was going on and it was all finished when I came back so I logged straight in, expecting confusion. I was confused for much of the time I was playing (Just over an hour.) but I also had quite a lot of fun.

WoW is very playable There's no point pretending otherwise. I do think the developers go out of their way - often several miles out of their way - to make it less playable than it could be but the basic structure is so robust it's almost impossible for them to fuck it up completely.

I will take a small portion of the blame for such confusion as there was. It was my choice to play one of my few Horde characters, which was already taking me out of my comfort zone, but even worse I picked one who was camped in Orggrimar.  

I have a love-hate relationship with the Horde capital. I love what it looks like and the general ambience but I hate trying to find anything there. Or even just trying to get from one side of the city to the other. It's not just a maze, it's a chaotic, unstructured mess. It's full of dead ends, there's no line-of-sight and the map is seven shades of totally useless. 

Warband-related perk. I think?

I was confused even before I got to Orgrimarr, though. I knew Warbands were a thing and I had the vaguest idea what they were but it turns out I know nothing about them that's of any practical use. After some trial and error I managed to get some of my characters sitting around a cheery campfire, like a bunch of sitcom characters on an ill-advised camping trip, but only about half of them made it (So maybe it was a horror movie not a sitcom...). 

I couldn't figure out why the rest were only listed on the drop-down list at the side of the screen. I never did manage to get any of those into a campsite. Whether that means they're not in the Warband or if they're in a Warband of their own or if they are all in the same Warband but just aren't showing up, I have no idea. 

I suppose I could go look it up but a) I don't have a lot of faith in the accuracy of online information about WoW, thanks to too many out-of-date or just plain wrong readings in the past and b) I don't care.

Since I'm a cheapskate, playing on the endless free trial or whatever it styles itself these days, none of my characters over a certain level were available. I think the cap for free play is still 20 but 20 is like 50 in old money now, or something? Not a problem anyway. I have plenty of lower-levels who are still allowed to log in and do stuff.

My favorite race in WoW is probably Goblin but I've done a lot of low-level goblining.  My second-favorite is Vulpera and I haven't worn them out yet so I picked on Odelie, a Level 10 Vulpera Warlock and woke her up.

When she arrived in Orggrimar (After the mandatory viewing of the visually impressive but otherwise almost wholly meaningless cinematic for The War Within, the current expansion that I can't play, not having bought it, so why even show it to me?) my first thought was  naturally to get the hell out of town. I would have, too, had Odelie not been standing right next to someone with a quest.

That quest turned out to be the start of a short breadcrumb trail to the expansion before last, Dragonflight. I didn't know Dragonflight was even available to players who hadn't bought it, although now I think about it I do vaguely recall reading something about old expansions being rolled into the current one for nothing. 

And this is one of the nicer views...

Anyway, it seems to be true because after I'd rounded up the scientists and scholars I was asked to persuade to go on the trip (And caught a bunch of stray balloons for some random kid because that's the sort of thing we heroes always have time for.) it was off to the Dragon Isles in a rather impressive zeppelin. The Horde do know how to travel, gotta give them that.

Arrival in the new lands was a lot less impressive. I swear, if I was the Executive Producer of a new MMORPG or the latest expansion for one, my very first ordinance would be "Put the best-looking zone right at the fricken' start". Why do they almost never do that? Why is it that the zone you see first is always a barren desert or a swamp or, as in this case, a filthy grey pile of rocks whose bleak ugliness is only made more depressing by dull, barely-glowing pools of lava?

Horrible place, made worse by horrible lighting. And it's not because the game is old or the engine isn't up to anything better. I have plenty of screenshots of delightful Azerothian scenery, all filled with color and vibrancy and interest. Didn't take any like that today.

Never mind. I'm sure it gets better. I just don't get why anyone would want it to be the first impression players get.

By this point I'd been playing maybe half an hour and I'd made next to no experience at all. I thought I probably ought to make at least some effort to progress so I grabbed what quests I could find and ran around doing them. Or trying to do them. It's quite hard to kill proto-dragons when you don't have any spells on your hotbar.

I'm not sure when or why but it seems while I was away something so significant must have changed that they had to wipe everyone's hotbars. All six of mine were completely empty, except for a single icon that had something to do with Warbands. Yes, them again.

Luckily for Odelie there was a guard nearby and he dealt with the proto-dragon while she sorted out her spellbook. Otherwise that would have been her second death of the session. I know everyone says Retail is so easy now you couldn't get yourself killed if you tried but I assure you that's an exaggeration. Just try running across those canvas roofs in Orggrimar and see what happens.

Once I'd got that sorted out, the rest went quite smoothly. The starting area in the Dragon Isles feels like it might have been designed by the same people who worked on the town planning for Orggrimar but other than that I enjoyed it. 

The gameplay, that is. The story, not so much. I will say, yet again, I find questing in WoW very dull compared to just about any other game I can think of. The quest text is dull both to look at and to read, which makes it hard to get invested in the narrative, such as it may be. 

Functionally, though, it's fine. The kill numbers are low, the drops come fast, the mobs die even faster... what's not to like?

As for the xp it was decent. I played for just over an hour and Odelie went from the start of Level 10 to just into Level 12. Two levels in an hour sounds quite fast (Although, honestly, not that fast by modern standards.) but bear in mind I had full rested xp and there's supposed to be an xp event on. I wonder how fast it would have gone if neither of those was true?

I finished up in the big clearing in front of the Embassy building. There were loads of players there. There were quite a few in Orggrimar, too. For mid-afternoon on a weekday, I thought it seemed pretty busy, especially since it wasn't even current content.

And as I said, I had fun. The xp was nice but the real treat was the loot. I got a couple of the Mysterious Chest drops from the event and while the gear in them wasn't game-changing (Still an upgrade, of course, though.) the 30-slot bag I found in one certainly was. Add to that the 20-slotter I got from a quest and I more than doubled my slots. When I logged in all I had was the default inventory and one ten-slot bag!

The event only has another week to go - I started late - so I'll need to get a move on if I'm going to make the most of it. Whether I have the motivation to keep logging in is a good question but if anything's likely to spur me on it's free bags.

Going Backwards To Go Forwards

The colorful screenshot you see above was not taken in EverQuest II's latest expansion, Scars of Destruction, for the very good reason that I haven't been playing it. It's from the previous expansions, Ballads of Zimara, which is where I spent a couple of hours earlier today.

That was because to do anything at all in the new zones you have to be Level 130. Level 128, which is as far as my highest-level character had reached when SoD launched a couple of days ago, or even level 129, as that character is today, just won't cut it. 

None of the locals will speak to you if you can't produce your Max Level I.D. Card. Nor will the bunch of neo-colonialists who've sailed across the Sea of Erud to stick their oars into the locals' business uninvited (The locals are pretty salty about it, too, I can tell you!)

Other than what I read in the press release, namely that Overlord Lucan has his eye on some prize and we all have to get to it before he does, I know nothing about what we're all doing here in the charmingly-named Sodden Archipelago. And if you're thinking that doesn't sound like a very scenic location you're not wrong.

It may well be that some of the zones in this expansion are as bright and charming as those in its visually delightful predecessor. I certainly hope so. So far all I've seen is the dock and immediate hinterland of the starting zone and you can judge how impressed I was by the fact that I didn't take a single screenshot.

Actually, that's not entirely accurate. I took one but only to show how far across the map I'd been able to explore without getting myself killed. 

There I am, on the far side of a bridge that's barred by locked gates you can just climb around. It's the entrance to some kind of orc fortress, I think. Orcs always make barricades you can just walk around or they do in Norrath, anyway.

Probably because this is an expansion with no level cap increase, I found I had no trouble at all with the regular mobs, wildlife, orcs or kappa (Something like that...) who are kind of like Teenage Ninja Turtles that grew up. I was able to explore quite comfortably but unfortunately there wasn't much to see. The place is damn ugly.

I was somewhat worried it would be, when the setting for the expansion was announced. The original EverQuest zones on which the expansion is predicated weren't very visually appealing and neither, so far, have been most of their EQII spin-offs. As far as I can figure it, the expansion opens in the remains of Odus and moves to the extreme west of Velious, which most likely means a lot of sand and rock followed by a lot of snow and ice.

Still, I'd have persevered with my exploring and adventuring if it had been profitable in any way other than satisfying my curiosity. Unfortunately, regular mobs no longer drop anything worth having and killing them gives infinitesimal amounts of xp. The only realistic way to progress is by way of quests and since, as I said, at my current level no was going to give me any, it seemed pointless carrying on. Clearly I needed to go away, get a couple more levels and come back when someone would talk to me.

I could have carried on with the crafting questline. My Berserker is also a Weaponsmith and he qualifies, having dinged 130 months ago. Unfortunately, I lost enthusiasm for that approach when I hit the point where you have to grind faction to get the next quest. I don't have an existential problem with the concept of faction-work but I find it a bit off-putting to have to start on it about twenty minutes into the  first session of a new expansion, even if the grind is flagged as "ironic" by the designer.

Of course, I wouldn't be having this problem if I'd just knuckled down and done my levels when I was supposed to, months ago. I was surprised to find, when I checked my quest journal, to find I have actually finished the Ballads of Zimara Adventure Signature Questline. I remember now that that was one of the reasons I stopped.

In the latest unnecessary and ill-advised change to the way things work, someone decided to make leveling "meaningful" again. For several years it had been reduced to a couple of sessions at most, meaning you generally hit the new cap before you got to the second zone in the expansion. I found that odd at first but I soon got used to it and I can say for certain I prefer it hugely to how it is now, when you get to the end of the story and still have several levels to go.

There are still quests to do, of course. There'd pretty much have to be, seeing as questing is just about the only way you can get meaningful xp these days. The problem is they're all either scattered among random NPCs in multiple zones or started by items that drop from mobs.

It sounds worse than it is. At this stage, every last detail of where and how has been codified on the wiki so it's just a case of following instructions. I wouldn't have wanted to be one of the poor sods who had to go out there and discover the information needed to write the guides I've been using, though. Some of the locations I visited today were really obscure and the mobs must have been a lot tougher back then, too.

Luckily for me, I don't have to think about it, just copy and paste and follow a glowing trail. Plus I can fly in all the zones and I'm already wearing gear better than the quests give as rewards because holiday and mid-expansion updates all raised the item level beyond the BoZ baseline. Sometimes it pays to take your time.

It's been a lot of fun actually, to the point that I can't quite work out why I stopped before. The zones are really lovely to look at, the questing is relaxing and if xp doesn't exactly zip along it does at least jog. I started the day about half way through Level 128 and finished just over ten per cent into 129.

I did go take a look at the new Panda quests, which I'd missed this year, just in case that might help. They're permanently available and I will almost certainly have to do them for the Augments, even though the panda gear will already have been made redundant by the free stuff in the Tishan's box next to the guy in Sodden Arcihpelago. When I checked the panda stuff, though, I found you have to be Level 130 to wear any of it, so I didn't pursue it any further.

Based on how long it took me today, I'd guess I'm going to need another two or three sessions to hit the cap on my Berserker. There's a slight danger that will take the edge off my interest and I won't want to move into the new content but if I was really worried about that I suppose I could use the free Level 130 boost that came with the expansion and get stuck in right away.

I did consider it but it seems like a waste to use it on the Berserker, when he's so close. I am most likely going to save it for my Necromancer, who's Level 125. I've been saying for years I want to swap to her as my "main" but it never happens because the Berserker has so many other hidden benefits from having done All The Things that I immediately start to miss his privileges whenever I play anyone else in current content.

Even if I don't play her as a main, though, I will definitely be using the boost to skip her past the five levels BoZ added. I am categorically not grinding any more characters all the way through that. It's put paid to any possibility of keeping half a dozen characters at the cap, as I had been in the habit of doing.

If I'm realistic, though, there was never any practical purpose to doing it, anyway. I only bothered because it was so easy. If it takes any effort, I don't have either the time or the interest to play through an expansion more than once. 

Or apparently even that often, if last time is anything to go by. I'll have to see how far I get with this one. I suspect it may take a while...