Saturday, January 30, 2021

Ok, Everquest, Let's Dance -- Level 96

The good thing (or bad thing?) about being subscribed to DCUO is that you know it's part of the "All Access" pass. Meaning, if I'm subbed on DCUO, I'm also naturally subbed to Everquest. This means it's always there, tempting you to log in and see how things are going from all those years past . . . or at least from 2017, otherwise known as "the last time I really gave EQ a good go."

Last night I looked at the computer screen for a second, just scanning my downloaded options and was like . . . hmmm . . . ok why not. I mean, I did recently log on for a nostalgia trip to Everquest. Might as well do it again, right?  RIGHT!

*logs in* Hello, Everquest!

Hello Teek brothers . . . what is it you do again?

The pain of remember how to play this game is too real. What a big complex beast you are, Everquest.

To be honest, the first few mobs I fought went painstakingly slow. They felt unnecessarily dangerous. I was using far too much mana. Everything felt "off." Like, it shouldn't take a few loops of the battle music to finish a fight. Then I remembered, oh yeah . . . I have a bunch of hotkey skills and started going through my list of AA abilities. A few hotbars later, and I was chugging through fights in the first loop of the battle music. Now that was more like it!

In werewolf form killing cool-looking Alien animal creatures. Not bad, Everquest! Not bad,

Suddenly a couple hours have flown by and it's 10:05pm, and I'm heading back to a zone because I died there. I mean, it's no worries now like it used to be . . . this isn't your hardcore 90's Everquest. I already recovered any lost exp and chilled in the guild hall for a while. I was mostly just mad at myself for dying. It was a stupid mistake and an easy one to make. Don't fight things without your back up against a wall where adds can't turn a simple fight into something more terrifying . . . unless you're a mage or a shadow knight doing the kiting thing, which I'm not. 

Suddenly it's 11:12pm, and I had finished up two daily quests to kill 5 gorals in the Resplendant Temple and 5 sharks in Sarith, City of Tides. I'm liking those cool zone names, yo, and I'm 10% closer to level 97! Victory! It honestly took a lot to 1- remember that daily quests were a thing, and 2- get all my billions of hotkeys and spells set up and to actually kill something again.

YES Death to Sharks and Squids and things! I'm a lizard-dino on a quest!

So there you go . . . with a little gumption and time to kill, I guess I could be level 97 in 5 more days if I just simply did the daily kill quests over and over. 

Let's just forget for the moment that levels go up to 115 now (yikes), and on the old Erollisi Marr server, population (at least in the areas I was in) was indicating to me that this would be a solo game for quite a while.

Happy Dueling!

2 comments:

Bhagpuss said...

My one tip to a returning player is this: do not, absolutely do not, neglect your Overseer missions. It's a slow burn at the beginning (for a few weeks, really). You won't have any of the agents you need to do anything but the most basic missions and the rewards for those seem paltry. Remembering to set the missions is a pain. It seems like a big waste of time.

But it's like everything else in EQ. You have to knuckle down, put in the hours. Don't expect it to come quickly. Just like those thousands of AAs, which start out trivial and eventually become far, far more important than anything else. Once you collect your high-level qgents, your Firiona Vies and Meldreths and Avatars of Brell and Tunare and all the other names you've been seeing all these years, and level up your specialties, each completed mission will bring you as much experience as an hour or two's solo hunting. And you can do ten missions in a day and it takes you less than ten minutes to set them.

And if you don't want the xp, how about taking the money? The crafting, gathering and especially the research missions give you vast quantities of trading materials that sell for huge amounts in the Bazaar. Take the ones that give Conflagrant and Befouled items (I forget the expansion names) and the most recent one at the end of the list. For ease of use, make a free account, create a character, send them to the Bazaar and set them up as a trader so you can trade 24/7 offline without having to bother about it getting in the way of your adventuring. You will make a fortune.

I did those things all last tear and my Magician went from 93 to 115 and I made five million plat. It took me about 15 minutes a day. I'm still doing it for the money although I haven't really worked out what to spend it on...

Stingite said...

@Bhagpuss -- wow! First thing I did when I logged in this morning was try this out. I've even been watching some videos trying to catch up on all things Everquest, but I hadn't even heard about this overseer feature. Pretty cool! TY!