I knew that this was a long quest that involved harvesting in every tier but I actually enjoy harvesting and, being 75, only tier 8 would have me harvesting in zones with agro mobs. How hard can it be, right?

It started off simply enough, go to any tier 1 zone and bring me back 10 or so of multiple items from the various nodes. This took me longer than I thought it would mainly because shrubs were almost non-existent – right, who’d a thunk it since it wasn’t that long ago that you could zone into T1 or T2 and find nothing but shrubs up. Next up was T2, I had Acsis port us over to Antonica and we were able to complete everything but the fishing without even getting out of site of the spires.

Next up T3 and this is where it started to get complicated. He wanted you to harvest equal quantities of the same items from both Thundering Steppes and Nek Forest. TS was no big deal, I know several good harvesting spots for all of the various nodes there but Nek has never been one of my favorite zones so I haven’t spent a ton of time there. Still I managed to find an area that I could run back and forth through and get most of the harvests, except for dens. T4 was a repeat of T3 except he wanted stuff from Zek and Enchanted Lands. Again, easy enough and, being 75, I went deeper in to both zones to leave the easier to get to harvest for the lower levels.

For T5 it was off to Rivervale and Feerot. Much like Nek Forest, Feerot has never been one of my favorite zones so I decided to put that off. I know Rivervale, I’ve harvested in Rivervale even when it was still green, this should be a snap. Two hours later I was finished with everything except DENS. In that entire time I had seen maybe 10 dens tops and you didn’t just need 20 or so of the pelts but also 20 or so of EACH type of meat from the dens. Frustrated, I gave it up for the night and started thinking about finding something else to focus on.

The next night Lore had her Paladin, Serrenial, working on the quest and she was up to Rivervale as well. She said she was seeing quite a few dens up if I wanted to come over and finish that off. I decided to tempt fate and head over there one more time but this time with just Sisca, Acsis would have to wait to get his cloak. It still took me about an hour to finish off the dens but apparently having Serrenial in the zone is what it takes to actually trigger the bloody dens spawning. Next up was Feerot and after my experience in Rivervale I have to admit I was dreading this since just moving around and seeing in there can be frustrating. I headed in and picked a direction and just started running as best I could in that maze until I came around a corner and ran into wall of dens, probably 6 of them all in a row, put there I’m sure just to taunt me after Rivervale. This led me to a little area around a pond that I could circle and harvest non-stop so I had everything except for fish – no fish in the pond just those strange snake things - within an hour. I pulled up the map, found the nearest river and headed off to finish up my fishing.

After the hell that was Rivervale and T5 I was dreading T6 but it was back to being simple, head to Sinking Sands and clear cut the zone. Next up was T7 and Kingdom of Sky was in for the slash and burn treatment. Finally T8 and off to Kunark where stuff is still green/blue and agro. Funnily enough it took me less time to do Kunark than it did to finish even Nek Forest much less the bloody, stinking, cesspit that is Rivervale.

So back to the brat…err eager young man…that started the quest for a final turn in. Oh, yeah he’s been working on your reward but his tailor friend is finishing it and she just needs you to bring her a Mantrap Root – oh just a simple T8 rare that’s really rare. Luckily I had one from one of the tradeskill missions, I’ve never actually harvested one of the things. Give her this rare prize and viola…

This is what a weeks worth of harvesting will get you.

Oh and if you’re wondering the helm is:

One of the quest rewards for the new Frostfell quests.

And now it’s off to Frostfell and running quests to get tokens so I can buy all the shiney new stuff from the broker.

Since she hadn’t really gotten any of her other tradeskillers through the introductory quest line in the Moors she brought along Serrenial, her 80 Provisioner. This matched up well with Sisca, 67 Alchemist (Sage line), and Acsis, 52 Tailor (Outfitter line), giving us coverage of all 3 of the base skill lines. So off we went to isle of Mara.

Apparently the Gnomes in Steamfont were having an issue and could use the help of some skilled crafters so Acsis fired up a portal and we headed off to see what we could do to help. When we arrived at Gnomeland Security we spent several minutes running around looking for someone to direct us before we realized that there was a new doorway that led to an underground research workshop. Zoning in there we saw this giant dragonbot on a rampage tearing up the place. Talking to the foreman revealed that they had built the dragonbot to help defeat the bot that had gone haywire and driven them out of Ak’Anon all those years ago but, again, something had gone wrong and he was malfunctioning. Not to worry though, they had a cunning plan! They would just build a bigger and more powerful bot to beat up the bot that they had built to beat up the first bot. Gnomish logic. Oh well they were willing pay good money, they were providing all the raws and I had a druid to get me the hell out if it all went horribly pear shaped.

The crafting part was fairly straightforward. There are 4 phases to the build, and if you do them one phase at a time you can watch the construction happen. Each phase need 3 each of 9 different items, 1 item per tradeskill class. So, even if you have a full group of 6 someone will still have to do combines for items outside of their primary skill set. With our little band of 3 that meant that 2/3rds of the combines were going to be outside our comfort zone. All of the items needed come from a special recipe book that they also provide so you really don’t need to bring anything. Though I would strongly recommend bringing any tradeskill stat boosting items you have, those out of class combines will really make you work for it.

A couple of hours later we had finally managed to get all of the pieces together and the gnomes went to work building their killer bot killer bot while we sat back and watched. Once he was completed he quickly waded in and actually attacked the other bot instead of turning on the gnomes like all their other creations.

Cue Robot Wars theme music

In case you were thinking of trying to take him out yourself

  Victory!

The good news is that once our guy had beaten the dracobot he just stood there and allowed us to loot. Awfully nice of him.

Each of us also got a token that we can collect and use to spend on various tradeskill focused items, including mounts that up your harvesting skills, at a merchant in Mara.

All in all it was an entertaining way to spend an evening and, for tradeskillers at least, it resulted in some nice rewards without actually having to kill a single mob. When you combine these quests with the dailies in the moors and the other various tradeskill focused items that were added with this expansion I think that all tradeskillers need to get together and buy Domino a really nice dinner at the next Fan Faire.

Tuesday saw the release of the fifth EQ2 expansion - yes kids there are other MMO’s out there that don’t have War in the title anywhere and they’re still going strong. From all accounts the launch went pretty smooth, to be honest this has become expected from the EQ2 dev team so hats off to them for raising the bar.

Some initial impressions:

Logging in on Tuesday night I had to spend the first 30 minutes or so organizing my hotkeys since you now automatically get App1 versions of your level 50+ spells/combat arts just as you did pre level 50. Sisca was a few levels behind in the Alchemy thing so was missing all of the level 68+ CA’s and I had apparently missed some of the lower level ones as well. Acsis was also missing a good 10 levels worth of spells since my Sage was only level 61.

I ended up taking the long way to the new airship landing since I forgot that I could use the house item you get for the shiney collection quest from the world event to port you right to the landing pad in Sinking Sands. Once there I joined the throngs lined up, many riding their new bear mount, waiting for the boat…err airship. I was a little worried that the crowds were going to make the new area unplayable but I had forgotten about EQ2’s world zone instancing system and there were already 3 versions of Moors of Ykesha to choose from when our airship started to pull out. There were still plenty of people there but it never really impacted performance and I didn’t feel the frustration of 20 people camping every spawn. We were able to move through the zone and the tradeskill quest lines as fast as we wanted.

Last night I managed to finish off the first series of tradeskill oriented quests as well as a couple of the new tradeskill daily quests. The tradeskill quests require you to craft level 70 items which are a bit of a challenge at level 61 but I was able to get the 4th tier on every combine. I was a little worried about attempting this with a level 50ish crafter but then I realized that even if you only get the first tier of quality you can complete the quest it will just take more combines. The other worry is the fuel costs but the reward seems to be configured so that even if you only get the first tier and have 4 times the combines you’ll still get your fuel costs back. If you can do it in fewer combines you’ll net a bigger profit.

The so far the tradeskill daily quests almost seem like an exploit. The first was to collect 10 each of 2 different sea shells that were easy to get with little risk of getting in agro range of anything. Of the 2 I did last night the hardest was the mail pickup quest that required me to run to the 3 major “cities” of the zone and click a box. The other required me to harvest 6 berry baskets that were at most 1000 feet from the quest giver. Both of those netted me some faction and 25g, not very exciting quest wise but a quick 50g profit.

Speaking of profit after completing all of those quests I ended up about 4p ahead over 2 nights. Since we really just started playing in Kunark over the last week getting this kind of coin is new to me but if this keeps up I can see why they priced some of the guild hall amenities the way they did.

After 2 nights of running around I still haven’t found the starter for the adventuring quests or the new adventure dungeons though I have to admit I haven’t looked all that hard as I was focused on completing the tradeskill stuff. I’m trying to avoid looking it up but I may have to see if I can at least find a pointer to the quest starter.

Overall I’m really liking the expansion so far. It was kind of nice to be able to get tradeskill XP for doing something besides staring at a workstation for hours and I’m especially eager to try out the new tradeskill dungeons. The new adventure dungeons sound cool but I think I’d rather wait and put together a guild group to do those first instead of trying to 2box or duo them so they may have to wait a bit. Still it’s nice to have that kind of content sitting there and waiting for us.

I like the idea of the daily quests but I’m also glad that, unlike WoW, there isn’t anything that I feel I have to have that makes me feel forced to make sure I grind my dailies to get cash. Right now at least, I look at them as an option to pick up some extra cash now and then. What I’m curious about is what level you can start them and how the money scales. If I can pickup 25g a day with a level 20-40 character that’s going to make equipping them much easier. Of course that’s also going to make the economy for lower level items go haywire, or should I say more haywire since the prices for lower level items is already outrageous due to transmuting.

Since Lore had to work almost every night last week I started out the week doing the D.I.R.T.Y. quests to pick up some more of the furniture available from the vendor. Since I was going to Loping Plains anyway I swung by Kelethin and picked up the writs with both Sisca and Acsis because, with the guild halls, we can use all the status we can get. I also really want to get the harvest chest amenity, which is 5 million status up front.

After doing the first round of writs I realized that Acsis had almost 1.5 million status and Sisca had another 600,000 so with the 2 million we already had in escrow we were getting close. I became very focused on getting to 5 million and spent most of the week doing the D.I.R.T.Y. quests and a round or two of writs every night.

On Friday I realized that I was halfway through 67 and 70 was within reach so I became focused on reaching 70 before the release of The Shadow Odyssey. Either Lore or I have said in the past that we wanted to push to level X but we always managed to get side tracked by something - finishing off some gray quests just to get them out of the book so we could start, grinding up tradeskills so that we could catch up our spells and gear to make easier etc. - but for some reason this time I decided to force myself to stay focused.

On Saturday Lore decided to join me - actually she realized that I was ahead of her and she couldn’t have that, not that she’s competitive or anything - and we spent most of the weekend plowing through the Loping Plains quest lines while going back and picking up the Kelethin writs every once in awhile.

At one point she mentioned that we had never completed the heritage quests in Lavastorm, mainly because she need room in her quest log and she hates to delete quests.

I told her to focus

Sunday afternoon we reached the point where we were all but done with the Loping Planes quest lines and were being sent into Mistmoore Catacombs and Castle Mistmoore itself. Oh, and the one quest that had us zone into an instance to be greeted by 3 mobs that were each level 70 epic x 4 (that’s a 24 person raid for you non-EQ2 players in the audience) and this is the yard trash. The catacombs was mostly green but it was group con and every pull was at least 2 mobs so it was tough, especially if we got an add.

I think it was at this point that Lore suggested maybe taking a break and leveling tradeskills to upgrade combat arts and spells.

FOCUS!

We were all 69 by this time, I could almost taste 70, so we decided to head to Kunark and start in on the quest lines there figuring that would put us over the top. We did the sokokar quests, the first 2 or 3 steps of several of the other quest lines and completed a couple of city writs and by the end of the night all 3 had leveled to 70 - Lore even managed to level before Acsis so she’s a little happier.

At some point before we left Loping Plains the guild dinged 31 and when I checked before camping we were already almost 25% through. I’m not sure how that happened but I’m not complaining.

We also managed to get to over 5 million status so tonight when we pay the rent for the guild hall we’ll also be able to buy the harvest locker which is what started this whole thing.

It works but it’s extremely slow, so don’t expect a magnum opus.

Last night I was torn between attempting the newest D.I.R.T.Y. quests and playing Fallout…Fallout won and I have to say that so far it’s done a pretty good job of bringing the classic series into the modern world.

The first half an hour or so was basically a combination tutorial/character creation session which was pretty cool but I’m hoping there is a way to bypass parts of that since it’s really only entertaining once. I don’t think it will be a spoiler to say that you actually get to start in The Vault in this one and after the tutorial part and the  initial quests that have you leave the vault I spent the rest of the night in the first town you come to.

This is where I can really see shades of the original games. After 3 hours of running around exploring town, talking to people and picking up a bunch of quests I already have what appear to be conflicting quests and I know that choosing one side is going to have an impact on how the story progresses.

So far my only complaint is the first person perspective and the real time combat. I’m getting used to the first person part - though I still don’t like running around either armed or with my fists up like I’m about to punch everyone - but I think the combat might take me a while. I need to play around with the VATS (paused slow motion Action Point based system) to figure out if I can make it come closer to duplicating the strategic turn based combat of the originals.

I’ve seen a couple of complaints about the lock picking and hacking mini-games but I find them entertaining. I find it interesting that they managed to give them appropriately different feels. The lock picking is a slightly twitchy while the hacking is a more mental exercise though neither is overly difficult. It’s true that as an RPG it should be about the characters skills and not mine but I find it a bit more immersive to participate in these activities and I can see that it would be easy enough to tweak the difficulty of the mini-game to make it easier for more skilled characters - I’m not sure it works this way I can just see how it could be made to.

Here Acis and Lore as Vampire Twins — this one amused me greatly, since normally it is Sisca and Acsis who are mirror-twins.

The look changed again as we arrive in LP:

We grabbed the Nightmare rides to Sonborn cemetary


and headed in to meet this friend. We were accosted as we arrived — something bit my neck, and everything went black! I woke in the merchant shop, and went out to see if I could find out what was going on. I found a man in mourning and a priest dithering about trying to cleanse the man’s home — we agreed to go in and find the ritual book (the previous volunteer, with book, never returned) and perform the ceremony.

Sadly, I left my camera behind, so we’ll have to do without pictures from here-on unless Sisca remembered his.

The haunted house was actually pretty entertaining: get jumped by vampires, find a key; retrieve items for the ritual; get jumped by vampires and find another key. Repeat until all ghosts are seen (mom, 2 kids, baby), vampire-filled coffins are torched, and so on. When we were finally ready to perform the ceremony, the ghosts were successfully sent home, but we were accosted by the vampire sire. After chasing him from room to room we found ourselves in the basement. As he died, he mocked us, saying that he was not the source of the evil, and perhaps we should look in the mirror! Doing so, we were accosted by someone who looked remarkably like Sisca! Once he was properly put to rest, we explored again — the ghostly family had departed, but they left behind a toy chest containing a mask, which Sisca claimed (and taking the mask was itself a quest btw). We then went out to reassure the priest that the house was cleansed.

We actually ended up cleansing the house twice more, so that each of us could acquire a mask; we also discovered that starting with the 2nd time through, L&L books were scattered throughout the house, allowing us to pick up some of our missing ones. Each time we zoned in we acquired the cleansing quest anew, so we were able to get both quest rewards, as well as quest exp each time (though the AA was only for the first time). Still, there were enough named on the first round to get a fair bit of AA, and Sisca and Loredena both leveled during the runs through.  /edit to add:  The funniest part to me was that Sisca was the doppleganger all 3 times!

Apparently we were set up to require site registration to comment (and since we host our own site, the generic Wordpress id didn’t work). For now I’ve turned that off, but I haven’t found the place to turn off comment moderation, so I suppose that’s the compromise. I don’t really expect much spam anyway.

For the final push, Sisca, Acsis and Loredena (all 63/64 at the time) collected all 4 of the ‘kill Sentries in Tenebrous Tangle’ writs and headed topside. We could get there, kill 20 sentries, and head back to Qeynos for a fresh batch of writs in less then 10 minutes per cycle. Three or four rounds later, we dinged 30!

After a fair amount of discussion, it was decided to purchase our guild hall in N Qeynos. We considered Gorowyn as being accessible to good and evil alike, but since we are primarily Qeynos based, and I liked the ‘look’ of the Qeynos halls better, that’s where we settled. Sisca, as original guildleader, did the honors. We failed to get a ‘now purchasing’ screen shot though, sorry!

We’ve designated one room as a library, and other as the crafting area. Kennet, Reyder’s monk alterego, is busily experimenting with housing items before decorating the room he called dibs on. He has some unique ideas, so I’ll be sure to post screenshots once he progresses a bit more!

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