Everquest II Player Diary Level 50 to 55

Choraz continued his frenzied race through the levels once he had hit 50, hitting 55 with only six days left before the expansion is released (I don't think he's going to make it). That's not through want of effort, however - levelling beyond the big five zero seems to take much longer than it did before it. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, as there's a lot of content for you to explore (hence the long post), but it's not ideal when you're desperately trying to hit level 65. Also, as with the previous entry, screenshots will come once I've got to Kunark. Give it 2-3 weeks and this whole diary will look lovely from start to finish.

Anyway, as I'd already completed the Sinking Sands, I kicked off level 50 by going to the Lesser Faydark. Turns out that was a bit of a mistake - despite being advertised as a zone that ranged from 50 to 60, it's quite clearly impossible to do anything there when you're a level 50. Given that I can solo non-heroic monsters five or six levels higher than me, this is quite astounding. I thought perhaps the dev team had got past the stage where they made horrible zones, but as the Lesser Faydark is most definitely another terrible zone they clearly have not.

So what's terrible about it? Well, first up, it's really enclosed and it's very difficult to work out where you're going. There are very few wide open spaces, if any, and the zone itself is actually pretty small. On top of that, I had the audacity to try zoning in from the Butcherblock Mountains side, which is a level 20-30 zone that contains the docks from Antonica, and I promptly found myself surrounded by level 60 triple heroics intent on melting my face with whatever magic spells they had to hand. Thanks to the fact my class is blessed with all sorts of ways of getting out of trouble, I managed to dodge through them and head towards the outpost beyond them, thinking I was in the clear. But the monk outpost beyond is also surrounded by level 60 mobs and the only quest-giver has hostile triple heroics flying around near him, meaning that you'll usually get killed before you can accept the damn quest.

Seriously unamused by the fact I'd died twice and achieved nothing, I pressed on and went deeper into the zone. I found an outpost in the middle of the zone, but it didn't offer me any quests - it only had quests for the high 50s - so I continued on my way. I immediately was set upon by a level 60 single heroic just as I walked down the path, so I ran past it, only to find myself in a part of the zone surrounded by level 60s. Predictably, I died. I respawned back at that outpost, and took another path. This one turned out to be leading in the vague direction of the Greater Faydark entrance and so did not contain quite as much uberdeath, eventually leading me to an outpost with quests around my level. Sadly, the wandering high-level mobs made the zone impossible to solo in when I found the Thexians I was meant to be killing, so I threw the hat in and moved on. I really don't like saying this, but the Lesser Faydark was one of the worst zones I've played in the game - it's restrictive, very difficult to solo and packed full of heroic mobs that you can't avoid because it's so tight. I genuinely thought the dev team were past that, but obviously not...

After that I went to Maj'Dul, the city in the Desert of Flames. That didn't amuse me overly either, as I'd aligned myself with the Court of Truth and therefore found both the Court of Coin and the Court of Blades hostile to me. This meant their patrolling guards would attack me, cutting off access to the parts of the city that had heroics guarding them. I kinda blundered around there for a bit, not achieving very much, then left. The city was more like a dungeon than a city and was largely abandoned, which to me isn't entirely surprising. I like the concept they went for, but I don't think the execution was ideal. For example, the other two Courts had stairwells down to their Court buildings, whereas the stairway to the Court of Truth was guarded by Court of Coin guards. So I had to fight my way to my court building, where I discovered I couldn't get in anyway.

In the end, most players who want to fight will go to a proper adventure zone, so I think Maj'Dul suffers from trying to mix a city and a dungeon - it's not particularly good at being either. The other thing to mention was the Arena, which is intended to allow people to team PvP one another or fight using 'champions' that can be bought or won from quests. Only problem is, I've never seen or heard about anyone using it - to use it, you have to stand by the entrance while you wait for opponents, rather than being able to run about like the WoW battleground queueing, and once inside the arenas are hardly inspiring anyway. It's a shame, because god knows that EQ2 could do with some casual PvP just for an occasional change of pace.

After these two levels I was still only about 35% into level 50, so I headed to the Pillars of Flame, which is another large outdoor zone that borders the Sinking Sands. It's unfortunately not as well designed as the Sinking Sands, but it's still not bad to play though(particularly as you get towards the mid-fifties). The quests are quite interesting and the variation of mobs in the level is quite good, and it still looks rather good, but inexplicably the heroics are back. There's one area full of tigers that has linked tigers that are double undercons, meaning I could quite possibly solo five or six of them at once, mixed in with triple heroics who can kill me in less than ten seconds. As they both look exactly the same, this is ridiculous and just makes travelling that part of the zone an undue hazard. I mean, it's not like anyone's going to want to group up and hunt the heroic tigers as any quests involving them can be done by hunting the easier linked ones, so why bother at all? Not to mention that this area is right near the zone-in outpost, meaning that unless you want to be dodging heroic tigers you need to fight your way through an enormous goblin camp to see the rest of the zone. There were also similar wandering heroics among the harpies, again looking exactly the same as their brethren, which killed me on a couple of occasions.

The other thing that annoyed me about the zone is that there were three or four areas you could get quests, but they were spread to different corners of the zone. So you'd complete a couple of quests and find you'd have to run/fly the whole length of the zone just to hand both in. Given quests from both outposts were for the same level range (in fact, often the same monsters), it seems a little strange to do it that way. It would have been more logical to have all the quests for level 50-51 in the first outpost, then you get sent to the second one for the 52-53 quests and the like. That having been said, however, it's still an enjoyable zone to play - it just didn't bowl me over like Sinking Sands thanks to a few niggling design flaws.

After this I popped over to Permafrost for a bit, a dungeon in Everfrost that contains the ghost of Vox, a famous dragon boss from the original EQ. She's an epic mob so we didn't try and tackle her, but we did head around the rest of the place and clear it. While it looks quite impressive in places (in a kind of badly-textured release EQ2 kind of way), the zone was very little challenge and by the end we were three-manning the place with the swashbuckler (rogue class) tanking. The loot was horrible, as in most old world zones, and there was minimal quests on offer as well. I left having gained half a level but feeling a little let down. Permafrost is a zone that needs updating, as it's largely obsolete given that it was made for characters who were capped at level 50 and had none of the gear that came in the later expansions. It can barely count as a dungeon any more either; it's just so damn easy that there's no sense of risk any more.

That done, it was back to the Pillars of Flame, where I headed to a dungeon called the Clefts of Rujark that straddles both the Sinking Sands and the aforementioned Pillars. This is quite a neat zone for two reasons; firstly, the lower level is entirely soloable if you're of the right level. The exp is average and there's not too many named, but it's nice to have somewhere to go that's between Sinking Sands and Pillars of Flame in terms of levels. The upper levels, however, are full of heroic group content with several nameds. You have to use a lift to get between them, so there's no chance of running into a heroic when you're soloing, so I thought that was quite a cool change of pace. Having said that, there were numerous rooms that you could fight your way into only to find that there was nothing to speak of inside them; it would be nice to have some kind of named mob or questgiver/quest target at the end of most of the corridors. With a decent group we cleared most of the Heroics, then did the instance inside the zone. That had three nameds in it, none of whom dropped anything worthwhile, but the Achievement Exp meant it wasn't a complete waste of time. I got a valuable level fighting in Rujark and quite a bit of Achievement exp from exploring the place and killing named enemies, so it was well worth clearing at least once.

The Living Tombs was next, a mid-fifties dungeon accessed from the Sinking Sands. I didn't spend long enough there to do many quests but I got a bit of achievement experience from the few I did, as well as for exploration and killing a couple of nameds. Again, the loot was pretty unimpressive, but I still loved the zone. Why? Simply because it looks so damn cool, with great mausoleums lit up by eeire green lighting and filled with undead. It gives the feeling of a really unnatural zone and that you're somewhere you shouldn't be, which adds to the tension quite a lot. It's really a shame that the zone hasn't been re-itemised because it really looks that good. The screenshots don't even do it justice; everyone should go visit it even if just to look at how pretty all the lights are. Maybe that's just my personal tastes, but I really think it looks that good.

The final zone I spent a bit of time in was Klak'Anon. This is the homeland of the gnomes from Everquest I, Ak'Anon, having been taken over by the clockworks. This is actually only the second dungeon I had visited in Echoes of Faydwer, after Crushbone Keep, and the first thing to mention is that it is damn hard. The monsters hit like a ton of bricks and, even though I'm wearing largely mastercrafted gear, I nearly died on several occasions while fighting a couple of trash mobs. That may be due to questionable healing, of course, but getting more than a couple of triple heroic adds when you're fighting will spell doom in Klak, unless you've got a crowd control class to deal with them. The respawns in the zone are also rather quick, meaning you've got be on your toes and keep moving forward else you'll find yourself in all kinds of trouble.

That having been said, I thought this was really good (despite it being quite mentally draining to tank, given the endless stream of adds you seem to get in some of the rooms). It's nice to have a challenge, and the Echoes of Faydwer dungeons are certainly that. Despite being of similar level to Permafrost, if you tried to three-man Klak the only place you'd be going would be the graveyard. The place is well laid out and comes with an in-game map that allows you to see where you and all your groups are in the zone just like you could in outdoor zones, which is a fantastic touch and one I really appreciated. There are a lot of quests there, one of which took two runs to complete but gave me a very good reward indeed, and plenty of named mobs to keep everyone happy. There's also an instance and a raid zone inside Klak - we went to the instance but found it a little too tough for us, so I'll probably go back around level 60 and give it another go.

Overall, 50-55 was quite a good experience, particularly towards the end when I spent a couple of levels in Klak'Anon. Having said that, though, it took a LONG time to get there and I expect that to only get worse as I progress through the levels. Still, it's nice to see the high-end game content and it's particularly refreshing that the EOF zones are a challenge even to someone with relatively good gear and fair bit of MMORPG experience under their belt. I'm quite eager to see the Kingdom of the Sky after the surprisingly good Desert of Flames, so I plan to visit that in my next entry. Until then, it's adieu from me.