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.

Everquest 2 Player Diary Level 55 - 60

Level 55 to 60 provides players with their first chance to reach the content brought by the Kingdom of Sky expansion, though it is probably one best not to take immediately. The mobs there start at around level 57, so I thought I'd best wait until then before I headed up into the Overrealm. That meant I had to find two levels either in the Desert of Flames or in Faydwer; luckily I almost immediately found a group being put together for the Mines of Meldrath, an instance in the Steamfont Mountains.

Admittedly, I was probably a couple of levels too high for the Mines of Meldrath at 55, but the wonderful thing about Everquest 2 is that the Achievement Exp you get for running a dungeon the first time will make up for that. The Mines themselves turned out to be inside an extensive tunnel system in Steamfont, but thankfully all the monsters were grey to me until I actually got into the instance (which took a while, as I had no idea where I was going). Once inside, I realised that I would be mostly facing clockworks, and I probably should have done it before running Klak'Anon - it seems to be intended partly as an introduction to its bigger cousin.

Anyway, the basic setup of the dungeon is that you have to kill a number of bosses and harvest a power stone from each, which are then used to activate a clockwork robot that will build a bridge to the final boss. Along the way a ghostly gnome appears, telling you a small part of his story and luring you onwards, but sadly I did not really get to listen to what he had to say - the group seemed intent on getting through everything as quickly as possible. That was a bit of a shame, I thought, because I do enjoy those little touches that add some background to a dungeon. The final bossfight was relatively challenging and we actually wiped, though that was largely due to my own stupidity (I pulled aggro while AOEing the bodyguards, then I decided to Feign Death to clear the aggro while forgetting I was still assisting the tank - so I FDed him instead, which got everyone killed). In general the zone was actually surprisingly hard, with the monsters hitting much harder than their non-EoF counterparts, so if you're not on your toes you could quite easily wipe. But on the plus side, the Achievement Exp was good, the loot was excellent and it was a fun way to spend forty five minutes or so (it's a relatively short instance).

After that, I figured I'd give the Lesser Faydark another try. I always had quite liked the (admittedly very different) Lesser Faydark from back in Everquest 1, so I wasn't entirely happy leaving the updated version with my previous conclusions of 'worst zone ever'. In fact, at level 55 the zone turned out to be a lot more accessible and, remarkably enough, quite good fun. That's not to say that I don't think the zone is not still badly designed, because it is - frankly, it's like a maze. The wandering hostile heroics are also still a complete nightmare, particularly near the Butcherblock Mountains area. However, at level 55 or 56 you don't instantly die when you get an add while fighting, which makes the zone somewhat less frustrating. The fact that the horse stations have been added makes the zone MUCH easier to traverse too, though naturally you've got to have found each of the stations before you go there.

Once you get into it, though, you'll find the Lesser Faydark quite an interesting zone. The quest lines are plentiful and actually kept me more than interested as I played through them, and the fact that there's an outpost in the zone with a mender and broker there (along with lots of quests) made me very happy. There's also an area in the zone that's been overrun by otherworldly attackers like Shadowed Men, which I really enjoyed fighting in. The Shadowed Men look very impressive with decent graphics settings on (apparently they look similarly good in the Obelisk of Lost Souls, but I always turn my graphics right down in dungeons as you can't afford to lag while tanking), with really cool smoky effects around the edge of their portals. There's also some weird void creatures that look vaguely humanoid while standing still, but then split apart and become very distinctly alien when they move. I spent half a level soloing around there to hit 57 after I'd done the quest lines and I really quite enjoyed it. Thus, I've upgraded the Lesser Faydark to a mediocre zone - it's far from well designed or beginner-friendly, but it's a lot of fun when you get into it. I really wouldn't bother going there till 55+ though; stick to the easier DoF zones instead.

Once I hit 57 I headed up to the Kingdom of Sky using the wizard spires in the Commonlands, ending up in a zone called the Tenebrous Tangle. But even after extensive leveling there, I'm still not sure if I like it, as it is quite an odd design (like much of the KOS that I've seen). Basically, the Overrealm consists of several zones, each broken up into numerous small islands connected by teleporters. While this does allow each little area to have its own distinct theme, usually dictated by the type of monster that lives there, it does strike me as somewhat lazy. Much like the original release zones of Everquest 2, they appear to have come up with a few ideas and then not bothered filling in the blanks, the empty sea between the islands in this case being replaced by empty sky. The graphical style in each zone is generally similar between each island, too, the only difference (as mentioned above) being the monsters that reside there. Having said that, the Tenebrous Tangle and the neighbouring Barren Sky were visually very distinct from one another - it was just pretty monotonous within them.

Putting aside the structure of the zone, though, Kingdom of Sky has some neat ideas. To reach the friendly outpost in the Tenebrous Tangle, for example, you have to leap off a waterfall and fall about five hundred metres into a big pool of water. It's nothing too major, but it is quite a cool touch. The zone is also quite clearly designed as a 'newbie' zone, as it's packed full of repeatable quests that make leveling towards 60 a breeze. I picked up two levels in TT before the easy repeatable quests ran out, and I didn't get bored because it went by so quickly. In terms of monsters, there's a new dragonkin race called the Droag that make up the majority of the enemies, as well as the standard dragonflies/snakes/wasps/hostile plantlife. Some of the islands are quite good for grinding, too, though finding the right teleporter can be a nightmare. The other thing worth mentioning about TT is that it contains the Sanctum of the Scaleborne, a dungeon that starts at about level 60 that I'll cover in my next entry, but I'll say now that it's very well designed and a lot of fun to play though. Overall, Tenebrous is quite a good zone that gives good adventure and achievement experience, though I do find the fact it is literally a series of unconnected islands with different creatures on them rather underwhelming in terms of zone design - had I paid good money to buy the expansion separately, I might have felt a little shortchanged.

To get up to 60 after I had grown tired of soloing in Tenebrous, I returned to Faydwer and did some grouping. My first port of call was New Tunaria, formerly Felwithe from EQ1. This was the home city of the High Elves back in the day, but over the last 500 years they had become a little more insular and now the place is a level 60ish dungeon. First up, it's worth noting the zone's visual style, which is very striking with a lot of gold and white marble. Sadly the exteriors of the buildings are actually quite badly textured when you get close, but the interior areas of the zone look very nice. The creatures you will be fighting are just average looking elves, mixed in with the stone statue mob models that you'll have seen before in countless other dungeons, but it's in the EoF mold and therefore a pretty tough zone. The mobs hit hard compared to those of similar level in other expansions and drop slightly better loot, but the zone overall is pretty badly done despite the potential it had for being really good. I was honestly expecting something special once I'd seen the striking white towers, and I was really hoping that they had done Felwithe justice, but sadly it was not to be.

The main problem with New Tunaria is largely that there's nothing to do. There's not many nameds and almost no quests at all, coupled with little loot worth remarking about (unless you're particularly keen on repeating the word 'average' to yourself). There was one quest, but to get it we had to pray at an altar while being beaten on by four non-heroic mobs. This wasn't too much of a problem once we'd worked out what to do, but then it turned out we couldn't pray at the altar because it was nighttime. A quest that you can only get half of the time? Yeah, great idea...

After getting rather bored of New Tunaria, my group decided just to head to the Court of Innovation instead. This is an instance within Klak'Anon, aimed at those in their high 50s, and it was a complete contrast to New Tunaria. Though by this point I was getting thoroughly sick of fighting clockworks, I had a really good time in the Courts - fighting through the dungeon involves a series of puzzles as well as bossfights, and it was challenging but not impossible. It felt well-balanced in that the zone felt dangerous but doable, and it taxed your head a little more than just hammering your hotbar keys. It was also cool because there were no respawns as it was an instance, meaning that the clearing of trash mobs was not much of a chore - you knew you'd only have to do it once. The final bossfight was pretty climactic (you really felt like you were fighting a final boss) and the loot was excellent, as was both the adventure and achievement experience. Overall, a very polished instance that shouldn't be missed by anyone.

To wrap up, level 55-60 was fine. It took a while to do but, with the release of the Kunark expansion, the level progression pre-70 is being made easier and therefore this is somewhat of a non-issue. I get the impression that the trek would have been quite dull without Faydwer, but being able to alternate between zones in Faydwer and the Kingdom of Sky kept things fresh and meant I didn't have to spend so long anywhere that I became sick of it, and that can only be a good thing. Next time, the Loping Plains and the rest of the KOS.

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.