EQ2 Journal - 10-September-2007

I've been mostly playing Everquest 2 during this weekend. The game has huge depth and complexity. Not easy to learn, but fun to explore. My warden (that's a kind of druid) is level 14 now, but I mostly concentrated on tradeskills this weekend, and so I'm also a level 22 tailor. Crafting has much changed since I first played EQ2, they removed basically all intermediate products. But the most time spent this weekend was on raising my gathering skills to above 90, which is the limit that will enable me to gather tier 3 resources.

Problem is that I play a wood elf, and my home area is Greater Faydark, which is a lousy place for gathering. Dark, not many resources, and those are widely dispersed. I did remember that my old characters I played in 2004 had a much easier time gathering stuff in Qeynos zones. So I decided to do a big excursion and visit Qeynos for gathering resources. The hard part of that was crossing Butcherblock alive, because that is where the transport to other continents is. A level 14 dies quickly when attacked by level 24 aggressive mobs. Fortunately the death penalty has been much decreased since I first played it, I just lose 10% durability of my items and get a measly 0.5% of a level as experience debt. I made it to the docks dying just twice. There I didn't see a boat immediately (you need to wait for one to come), but stumbled upon a flying carpet and clicked on it, which flew me to the Sinking Sands. There I was stuck for a while, there was a carpet there too, but it only lead to a city in the desert. Only when somebody told me that I shouldn't left-click the carpet (which flies you to the default destination), but right-click (which gives you a choice of destinations), I found that I could fly directly to Qeynos on that flying carpet. Nicely animated too.

In Qeynos I first visited the newbie zones to get gathering past 20, the first limit. That was very easy, because there weren't many people in those newbie zones. As several commenters remarked, the newbie zones from the expansions are better for quests, so nobody bothers with Qeynos any more. Being also a bit too high in level for these zones, I had some fun soloing the elite named mobs there, gathering some nice treasures.

Then I left the city and went out to Antonica. It is really, really strange how the brain works. I haven't been in Antonica for 3 years, and I didn't play EQ2 only for a few months back then. But I still knew my way around Antonica, including knowing the places where you could gather stuff without running into aggressive mobs (around Oracle Tower mostly). So I spent several hours in Antonica, until I had all my resource gathering skill up to at least 90 (except for fishing, which I don't think I need). Unlike WoW you aren't limited in the number of gathering professions you are allowed to have. But you don't get a skill point for every attempt, so getting up to 90 in each skill takes quite a while.

When I teleported back home, I was loaded with resources for crafting. I had also found all sorts of rare resources, which are valuable. I kept the rare leather for myself, and made myself an armor out of cured leather. But the other rares and the treasures from the named mobs I put up on the auction house. I should be rich soon. Well, relatively. :)
- posted by Tobold @ 7:06 AM Permanent Link