Me When I Do Something about Doing Something . . .

I woke up this morning with a genuine fear response that I can't really explain. It lingered here with me for about two or three minutes out of nowhere. It was a pretty odd feeling.

As I sat there gripped with fear for no reason, I had a lot of thoughts run through my head and one of them was about how much I hate EverQuest for sucking away so much of my time, but I think that was mostly just a reflection of how two or three things (outside of my new, reborn EverQuest Addiction) are stressing me out. Not EverQuest itself.

Yeah, it probably wasn't fear. I'm going to say it was probably stress that just finally manifested at the weirdest moment about 30 minutes before I was supposed to actually wake up . . . and THAT has been bothering me all day.

1. Blaugust stresses me out. I put everything on hold for it, and I don't know why I care so much about posting every day. I shouldn't! Literally people sign up and never post anything. Why should I care? I shouldn't!
2. I've been asked to give a ten-minute talk in church on Sunday. I haven't even started writing it, and that's stressing me out. I really need to just unplug and focus to get this done. I used to be in Toastmasters, so public speaking matters to me. I'm typically not one of those that just gets up and reads off a paper.
3. I signed up to showcase and talk about one of my songs and my album I've been working on called Cosmic Radiation and Bad Luck. This is for a group art night at the cancer institute this coming Wednesday. I shouldn't stress about this, but it's stressing me out. I've listened to the song 20 times, made a handout for it, thought about it waaaaaaay too much for a little art gathering of cancer patients.
4. I had to shift my whole infusion schedule around because I had COVID, so that's been delayed a week . . . and that's stressing me out. My brain latched on to that delaying treatment for a week and started going crazy. STOP BRAIN, STOPPP!
5. I came back to work yesterday with a mask on (out of an abundance of caution) and people were stressing out seeing me wear a mask . . . which stressed me out enough that I asked the big boss if I could just go work from home for the day, which I did.
6. Work in general is stressing me for some reason. Missing a couple days, fear of failing, an encroaching deadline . . . you know how it is, but I'm going to be fine . . . it's just all in my head.
7. I missed D&D because of the COVID. It's a stress reliever for me. (Much like video games are a stress reliever for me.)
8. I have a video game project I've been solo dev'ing. I've paused working on it now for about three weeks, and that's stressing me out . . . but it is what it is. I'm so close to getting this out the door and into people's hands for real on the app store. There's no deadline from anyone, but it's there hanging out in the back of my mind.

SO . . . I know I have a legitimate stress problem, and I think I inherited a lot of it from my mom. She was a Type A personality that oozed stress. I mean, look at me. I can't just play a game and enjoy it; I have to write about it. I can't just play a game of D&D with a local nerd group; I have to make a whole comic book. I can't just have cancer; I have to make an album of music about it. 

STOP! Why am I like this?

Honestly, I just need to put on some soothing music, light a couple candles, and chill tonight. I think I'll feel a whole lot better. I don't need to log on to EverQuest. I don't need to write a talk. I don't need to do anything . . . although technically I guess I did just write a blog post about not turning everything into a project.

I did it again, didn't I? GOSHDANGIT!!

Happy Dueling

Need Moar power? Level ALL THE THINGS in Everquest Legends!

Before I mentioned how I was running into a wall with soloing above the Tier 2 Nagafen solo raid boss with my current Beastlord / Cleric / Shadow Knight build, but NO MORE! Behold the delicious loot and corpse shot below from the Tier 4 Lord Nagafen.

What in the gold-plated koshigatana is going on here?

In EverQuest Legends you can not only level your loot, but you can level your spells as well, so today I took my Sacred Echo healing spell and amped it up to its fifth or sixth tier, which lowered its cost, lowered its casting time, and extended the duration of the heal over time. That was all I needed in my battles of attrition with the big bosses. Easy.

That wasn't the first spell I leveled though. That honor went to my Summon Warder spell, which I took all the way up to Tier 10, raising my summoned warder's level to 49, just one level below mine. That helps everything the warder does, from debuffing to tanking to dps'ing. Good ol' Stingite's Warder is my most valuable buddy! Just look at us posing together in the Plane of Fear.

Cazic scared the skin off my bones!

I didn't enjoy my time in the Plane of Fear proper. The adds are just as insane as I remembered them to be back in old school EQ, but the solo Raid version of the Plane of Fear is fantastic!  You kill four mini-bosses and their adds to spawn Cazic-Thule, and then you get to play Loot Pinata with Cazic! One thing I have to warn you about this, tank him so that if he sends you flying backwards, you end up inside the building, not over to one of the sides -- I did that and although it didn't cause me to lose the fight, ended up delaying the inevitable as I was swimming, floating, rooted, in a wall of fire, and about 100 feet off the ground.

This screenshot brought to you by the number 18.

Cazic Thule wasn't my only solo raid effort. I also ventured over to battle Master Yael, the angry elemental found at the bottom of The Hole. Yael is another one of those mobs that likes to send you flying backwards, which has the potential of sending you into a pair of adds. 

He's a pretty angry, animated dirt pile.

And finally, Innoruuk, the Prince of Hate, fell as well, and with that, I have now completed all the currently available solo raids in the game.  Planes Explorer Achievement complete!

Don't you hate when you're dead?

All that's left would be to see how far I can get in the Plane of Sky, which doesn't really have a solo "raid" like the other bosses. You can make a solo instance of the Plane of Sky, but there isn't really a 20 hour lock out and a voidling to get things started. There are keys for island hopping, but no voidling.

Anyway, the real breakthrough for me today was just seeing exactly how powerful raising all my spells in level can be. I've also managed to get a lot of Best in Slot (BiS) gear for both the Shadow Knight and Beastlord, so I'm feeling pretty good. Just need to keep hitting these raids OVER AND OVER AND OVER and I'll be all geared up with leveled spells just in time for them to drop Kunark on us and make all the work meaningless. ;)

Maybe by that time I'll have even overcome my barriers in the Plane of Sky . . . and THAT's going to be the end game grind, unless I want to just goof off like I did last night in the new, redone Castle Mistmoore zone. I made a respawning dungeon and cleared it all a few times, which had the side result of raising my faction with the king of the elves. Hmmm, to kill elves or embrace them . . . I'm not sure what to do.

Happy Dueling! 

Comparing EverQuest Legends and Project Gorgon

While playing EverQuest Legends, I can't help but compare it to Project Gorgon. I was kind of a poster child for Project Gorgon like six years ago, singing praises for anyone who would listen! When I lost my game design job, I actually reached out to them asking if they needed another for their team . . . they did not and could not, but Sandra was sympathetic and cool. (She was a good soul RIP.)

PG is a skills-based game where you can (almost) infinitely level a player's skills in any number of combat styles, mixing and matching to your heart's content, resetting and rethinking builds on the fly. While playing, I started out as an Animal Handler (of course . . . because I'm a beastlord through and through) and mixed it with Fire Magic, Shield, Knife, and eventually embraced the full beast inside, turning into a Fox / Animal Handling combo.

Me, my illusion, and my Fire Rat Pet in Project Gorgon overlooking the Fae Realm

EQL on the other hand, while you can level skills, is a class-based game where you can (almost) infinitely level all the classes, mixing and matching to your heart's content, resetting and rethinking builds on the fly . . . and not just two skills, but THREE classes!

I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I started this journey: a Beastlord and a Cleric. Those were the two classes I played in original EverQuest, it was a moral imperative that those be my two classes. Shadowknight was just a happy accident that I stumbled upon because I wanted something kind of tanky and awesome. 

A mummy that's also a ninja monk . . . quirky, like Project Gorgon

Now that I'm at max level, I'm not sure I want to switch to anything else just yet (also because this latest patch seemed to buff beastlord pets) . . . Although, being a bard or an enchanter or a berserker could also be amazing. Swapping out Beastlord for Magician could be fun. There are OPTIONS, which is great. 

That ability to swap around your build just wasn't a part of EverQuest Classic unless you wanted to start a new character or multibox. Later, they added spirit shroud forms so you could play as a different class and be the same but different (also so you could group with your low-level friends). It didn't really stick, and they never improved the system (/sigh). Even later, they added mercenaries so you could get the power of more than your class without multiboxing.

Life was legitimately hard in EverQuest playing as a soloing Evil Eye.

Beyond that, PG and EQL both have that old-school, early 2000's computer game charm about them. Back in 2019 I talked about converting to a paying player in Project Gorgon and listed off seven reasons:

1- Oodles of skills and combinations of skills to play with.

2- Quirky charm. 

3- Good Danger Balance. 

4- Nice people. 

5- The price is right. 

6- Demo Level cap at the right spot.

7- Nostalgia trip. 

I would say that all of that is clicking for me with this version of EverQuest. Unfortunately, there's no demo of this game, but if there were, I'd put that cap right at 15. And to the Project Gorgon people, I would have upped your game and included a subscription (Not just a VIP Membership program). To be honest, I might not have played your game as long as I did if I were paying for a membership. I'm fickle like that, but if you had, maybe you could have hired me as a designer! I would have loved to work on your game! As I was taught, you kind of have to be an ASS (Always Sell Something) when you're in games to, not just survive, but grow.

Anyway, I'm glad I jumped on the EverQuest Legends bandwagon at the launch here. I think there's something there. The Nostalgia trip is strong, the price is right, there's a good danger balance (not nearly as punishing as old EverQuest), and the people in my guild are nice (let's not talk about general chat too much in any MMO). 

( . . . I just remembered the Runes of Magic had a dual-class system. Man, I'm a sucker for this stuff.)

Happy Dueling

Hunting Dragons, Surviving COVID

Well, I stayed home from work today because I felt sick. I wasn't sure what I had, but I was pretty sure I picked up whatever-it-was from my boss last Thursday. He was hacking and sniffling, and my desk is near his. Friday I went and had a COVID shot, not because I was afraid of getting COVID, but because my oncologist suggested that I do so because there was a study saying cancer patients going through immunotherapy increased the effectiveness of the immunotherapy by getting one. Long story short, the doctor today took a quick test and, sure enough, I have COVID. Gosh dang, me and my bad luck!

Fine, I took the opportunity of being home sick to go kill dragons in EverQuest Legends. First up was Nagafen. Naggy was one of those dragons that I had always heard about, but never fought. Well, that all changed today.

I imagine old guilds in EverQuest used to surround this corpse for screenshots.

The great thing about EverQuest Legends is you talk to a "voidling," in an instance that would typically feature a raid and spawn a solo version (or group version) for you to take on. Once you defeat the end boss and exit your raid instance, that raid (on that difficulty setting) is on a cool down for 20 hours. You can then select the next higher difficulty and give it another go, which I did and won again. I even tried the next difficulty above THAT and won again . . . but it was close.  Close enough that I decided not to push my luck and try it one more time.

RIPOSTES OF A DRAGON MAW!

Instead, I decided to travel all the way across the whole gosh darn continent up to Permafrost and take on the second dragon I've been itching to fight. Lady Vox. Again, I don't think I ever fought Lady Vox when I was in EQ. No one was really interested in running those raids anymore by the time I hit raid levels, so . . . that was that.

Vox comes with a cleric add that you really need to take down first. Because of that, Lady Vox and her cleric friend just nuked the heck out of me and my warder, causing the fight to be a battle of attrition. I downed her once. I downed her on the next difficulty. On the third difficulty, she got me when she was a 6 percent life. She had won the battle of attrition, BUT . . . her cleric was dead. I buffed up and finished the job without her pesky cleric friend, and won by a mile . . . it just took a LONG time. (Thus are the natures of these battles of attrition. OUTLAST is the name of the game.)

Thanks, oversized loot pinata!

The loot from today was pretty interesting. On top of the four 100% 8-slot weight reduction bags, I got a Bladestopper shield, a Cloak of Flames, and a bunch of other random loot that didn't really apply to me. Pretty good upgrades, and it doesn't matter that I'm not using a shield in my kit because EverQuest Legends gives you two additional slots for "any" item. I threw that bad boy in there and didn't think twice.

The clicky effect doesn't require a peridot to cast and has a 10-minute cool down. I'll take a free 700 hit points every 10 minutes!

Happy Dueling

A Sunday Planer Mini-boss Buffet in EverQuest Legends

Today I went back to the Plane of Hate for a bit and proved to myself that I could solo the mini-bosses there, which felt amazing btw.  I was so worried from the experience I had trying to solo Coercer T'vala at level 47. It was good to go back and get some vengeance.

It just feels so wrong from this angle . . . doesn't it?

Also, it was pretty great to get a fancy new Bloodmoon scythe from the Lord of Ire. I swapped that into my Primary hand pretty quick and went about my business of killing Plane of Hate bosses. Lord of Ire, Coercer T'vala, Avatar of Abhorrence, Magi P'tasa, and the Ashbone Broodmaster all fell pretty easily. I mean, I had to play smart by swapping stances a few times and not just running in with a half full mana bar, but I was able to get the job done.

Get them teeth away from me! SMACK!

After that I thought, what the heck, let's go try the Plane of Sky? I had no idea what I was doing there and had to look up a guide. My experience with the Plane of Sky was pretty limited back in the day. In fact, I took one for the team and bound an alt of mine to some far island so that the guild could have access to getting people there for an epic quest . . . or something like that? My only instructions were, "Don't move."

So, after going through and soloing up through the third island boss and dying spectacularly to the fourth island boss (and his two lackies), I have a better idea of what's going on here. I mean, I got a couple cool drops from the bosses there, but no quest items that could have been turned in for uber loots. Apparently, I'm after some Azerack Skin from the Protector of the Sky on Island 2 so that I can make some cool Azerack Skin Wristwraps.

It puts the lotion on its skin.

Maybe after getting better equipment, I can head back and try to take down Gorgalosk?  I'm starting to see why Enchanters are next level when it comes to soloing in this game. If I could charm the add and sic it on Gorgalosk, I might just have a fighting chance! For now, it's dirt nap city.

Sleeping in the dirt in the Plane of Sky. Zzzzzzz.

I still need to try out Plane of Fear though! (Again, being an enchanter would be kind of cool because of those adds.)

Happy Dueling!

Don't be Hatin' -- I'm Max Level in Everquest Legends!

It was a fun day of EverQuest Legends!  About 30 minutes ago, I dinged 50, the current max level! 

WOOT!

Basically, I spent the whole day in The Plane of Hate. Unfortunately, I'm not strong enough to take down the raid bosses (um, I haven't tried again since hitting 50th level, but at level 47 and 48, it was not happening for me).

Who's the Champion now?

Instead, I started a solo instance of Hate with non-respawning enemies and just cleared out the whole gosh darn place, minus the bosses, about 3 times. It was all high level enemies that awarded great experience and once I figured out that you just don't fight in the hallways and instead pull into the rooms, everything went pretty smoothly.

Time for a little chopsticks!

What I remember of the Plane of Hate from back in the day was that I had a guildmate that took myself and two others there and it didn't end well. I never really went back. I love that they've made this version of the game where you're basically a super version of your old self. This is really a great re-done experience, and if you're an old EverQuest player that stopped playing EverQuest, but still have the great memories . . . yeah, this is the game for you.

They really loved the short bangs look when they were making these models back in 1999.

Once you hit 50th level, you are given a free class unlock token. I wasn't sure what to do with it at first, but I decided to unlock the mage class. It's one I never really played but seems very similar to Beastlord, just a magical elemental pet and instead of getting in the mob's face, you sit back and nuke from a distance. I don't know if I'll try playing up a mage, but it's the one I unlocked. /shrug.

I guess this unlock is free -- the rest require a quest in the Plane of Sky.

One thing is for sure, I'm overflowing with loot! Plane of Hate was very generous . . . the only bad thing here is that it was generous with loot that I can't really equip. Anyway, now that I've finished my goal, I suppose hitting ALL the planes (fear / sky) is the next objective! 

Happy Dueling!

EverQuest Legends -- Out of Kedge into Hate!

Sneaking in a post here at the 11th hour to say that . . . I MADE IT TO THE PLANES! Ding 46!

I spent a large part of yesterday and today fighting around in Kedge Keep (as foretold). Honestly, I really liked my time I spent there. It can be very dangerous in spots for me when I accidentally pulled 5 or more enemies at once. That didn't happen often though. 

Ol' Flotsam and Jetsam trying to take a bite out of Stingite

After a couple levels in Kedge, the entrance enemies started to con light blue or green, so they were easy to chew through, but didn't give a lot of experience. it took delving deeper into mermaid territory to really get the exp flowing again.

Gloomwater and Gloomstalker . . . why are mermaids so gloomy?

I made enemies with Estrella of Gloomwater herself while in Kedge Keep. Her lore entry in the Library of Erudin says she's, "the leader of those mermaids that went to serve the last kedge and watch over and guard him. An especially beautiful mermaid, her magic is just as strong. Her morose demeanor is punctuated with volatile anger at all land dwellers. It is said she took her title of Gloomwater to remember that she is a sole survivor of a magic plague that surface dwellers wrought, a plague of Bertoxxulous that ages ago spread like black ink through the pristine waters of her ancestral home, killing her people wherever the gloomy water reached. She bears little love for surface dwellers and harbors a special hatred of necromancers." BUT WHAT ABOUT FRIENDLY NECROMANCERS?!

Gimme that Lammie!

Loot in Kedge Keep was interesting. There's a lot of weapons that seemed suitable for lower levels. If I had "alts," I'd pass down a dozen or so random weapons that weren't really an upgrade for me. I did manage to score a Lamentation Blade, from Estrella, but I feel at my best when I'm slugging things with two hands like a proper Beastlord.

I think you may have a cavity on your back incisor . . . .

After hitting the magical level of 46 here in Kedge Keep, I decided it was time to take my first steps into the Plane of Hate, along with like 20 other people standing at the zone in. No worries! It's super easy to make your own private instance. DONE! 

Imagine all the people, living in the plane of hate!

I love the enemies here. It just feels like classic D&D with Rats, Ghouls, Specters, Zombies, and Mimics. Just your classic dungeon crawl fare. I was pretty happy with the random loot that seemed to be dropping like candy here as well. Trash mobs dropping good loot!? Who would have thunk it!? What is this, Diablo?

It's a very bite-y chest of loot!

I'll be spending a couple levels here for sure. Hopefully this weekend might be the first time I can actually group up with a few folks from the guild. I'd love to see what that's like now that I'm close to max level.

Happy Dueling!