Everquest II Player Diary Level 60-65

Well, Choraz did eventually make it to level 65, though it was a beleaguered effort some two weeks after the release of the expansion.

Sanctum of the Scaleborn was my first port of call at 60. This is a dungeon in the Tenebrous Tangle, and it's superbly executed. It consists of two levels broken up into various rooms, each one containing a named (if he is up). There is quite a lot of trash mobs and the respawns can get annoying, but the zone is brilliant experience and has a lot of achievement experience for the named kills/exploration exp. The big plus, however, are the quests. There are a number of quests for the dungeon, all of which are found within the walls of the dungeon, and they provide a logical progression through the zone and lead you deeper and deeper with each step in the quest chains. They are reasonably interesting quests as well, but it certainly is a bonus to get the free quest exp and AA as well as the dungeon rewards. If a group of friends ran through the dungeon together right from the start, I can see them having a really good time doing it. If I had to pick a flaw, it'd be that the quests are usually multi-stage, so it can be hard to find people on the same part as you (and even rarer to find a whole group there), but really that's just a minor niggle. The Sanctum really isn't too hard for a decent group, but it's still a really well designed zone that gives an ideal place to level up from 60-67 or so.

After that it was onto the Barren Sky, the mid-level zone in the Kingdom of Sky that runs to about level 64. The quest lines weren't too hard there and provided me with about a level and a half, and I was able to complete the whole zone by level 63 despite some of the quests going up to level 69. As always, monsters from older expansions are easier, and KoS is considerably easier than Faydwer zones of the same level. The look of the zone is rather nice, mostly Arabic-inspired in architecture and generally pretty deserty, which makes a nice change after the jungle of Tenebrous Tangle but can leave you rather sick of deserts after you've fought through the Desert of Flames (particularly as some of the architecture is remarkably similar). There's not really much to talk about regarding the Barren Sky that wasn't already said about Tenebrous Tangle - the zone isl made up of tiny islands, which I don't like, but you do get used to it even if it is a pain to navigate. A few quibbles with the quests - the major quest line requires you to summon various NPCs at their 'listening posts' with your flute, but it took me ages to find the listening post in the first place...and why? Well, because it's less of a post and more of a stick in the ground that does not look even slightly important. Why not make it suitably impressive, or clickable, and then people won't walk straight past it when they're looking for it...

After Barren Sky, I decided to head down to the Isle of Mara. This was an adventure pack that formerly retailed at $4.99, but as the Kunark expansion comes with all previous EQ2 content I now had access to it. It basically consists of a rather oriental-style village populated by monks, and then a few group instances and some raid bosses. It's actually a very beautiful town, with some rather easy quests available in the town for those of level 55 and up. After completing them, I headed into the other outdoor zone of the adventure pack and explored it for the AA. Towards the end there were a lot of heroics to dodge, but there was some really cool stuff to see too. The big lake near the end of the zone features a flooded temple I had a good time exploring (it contains a dungeon), and there's a big tomb earlier in the zone that also contains another dungeon. Without a group I didn't bother exploring either, but I did very much like the look of the zone even if it was rather easy (pre-EoF monsters again). Whether or not it was worth $5, I don't know - I suppose at the time of release it probably would have been, as the dungeons would have been pretty busy, but I would have felt a bit ripped off paying for what is essentially two outdoor zones (one with no mobs in it) and a couple dungeons when I'm already paying $15 a month - I think SOE showed good sense in abandoning the Adventure Packs and concentrating on expansions and free updates.

Speaking of free updates, along with Kunark came the new racial abilities, which are pretty cool (if not game-breaking) and serve to differentiate between the races a lot more than before. My Iksar can now breathe underwater, for example, while Dark Elves can hover, Gnomes can summon clockwork pets, Kerra can pounce and Sarnark can breathe fire on unsuspecting enemies. The fact that all the races were the same used to annoy me a bit and, while this hasn't exactly brought back all the racial cities and racial tradeskilling of EQ1, it's certainly provided some kind of identity to the different races. Kudos to the dev team for doing so.

The other thing I decided to do post-Kunark release was check out the various mounts on sale. The Kunark rhinos were pretty cool, if perhaps not as outlandish as I expected, but I was struck by the sheer number of mounts that a player could buy if they wanted to. Believe me, there is a LOT of choice there, with the new level 80 guild mounts looking extremely cool (fiery breath, eyes and feet on the new wargs, for example, with your choice of orange or blue flame). The old armoured horse mounts still look fantastic too, but sadly I don't think many people will be using them now all their flame-spewing cousins are available. Still, it's just another testament to the depth of EQ2 in terms of character customisation available.

Anyway, back to the levelling. After Mara I went off to Bonemire, the highest-level outdoor zone in the Kingdom of Sky. This is pretty weird as it is set in space with bright pink rivers and a crashed gnomish spacecraft to get your quests from. The main bad guys here aren't the aviaks of the previous two zones, it's largely the Ravasect, praying-mantis style bad guys who look rather cool and go down quite easily. While the zone does feel a bit incongruous with the rest of EQ2, it's quite refreshing to see a zone that's entirely different from the rest of the world - it reminded me a little of Silithus, if you're a WoW player, except I prefer the Ravasect to the nasties in Silithus. The quest lines are not really anything to write home about, though they do their job, and Bonemire does provide a bit of variation from the standard EQ2 zones. I enjoyed playing through it, though I only got about a level out of it because the solo quests are so easy to do. I'm still not sure if I'm comfortable with spaceships and space stuff being in EQ2, but that's a debate for another day. Bonemire is an okay zone, but by now I was getting thorougly sick of flying between countless tiny little islands in the sky.

So it was back to the Loping Plains to finish the grind up to level 65. The step up from Bonemire was pretty noticeable, as the monsters are packed right in in the Loping Plains and so it's easy to get adds while you fight, but I was able to wrap up the rest of the solo quests without too much trouble. I've got to say that I do like the Loping Plains quite a lot as a zone, with the fog and undead and ruins everywhere making it rather distinctive, like Darkshire in WoW. The quests are quite well done too, so all in all the Loping Plains was a good place to level and felt dangerous and hostile, like a high-end zone should.

Level 60-65, for me, was just a means to an end. There were several zones involved, the best being Loping Plains and the Sanctum of the Scaleborn, but all of them served their purpose. I can't say that they gripped me in the same way as the Steamfont dungeons did, for example, but they raised me up to level 65. Once I hit 65 I went to Kunark immediately, which is probably a good thing. The KoS was fine for seven or eight levels, but the thought of having to find another five levels grinding in Bonemire or the Loping Plains (as I'd done all the quests) really did not excite me, so I was pretty happy that there was an expansion with new zones that I could run off to. And then circumstance (exams) took over and had to stop playing EQ2. Maybe I'll continue the journey in the future (it seems stupid to stop now), but we'll see what happens.