EQ2 yesterday was enjoyable, as always, but a bit frustrating. Despite assurances that we’re in the right level range for Nektropos across the interwebs, (one level 35 character, three level 34 characters), we got our asses handed to us.

The entire evening was spent trying to work on the sisters of Nektropos castle. Following the wisdom of several folkses, we tried to start with Sheila. Several times. Every time, we found our tank getting smashed for about as much per shot as my big heal (with an achingly long reset) does at a time. It’s all heat damage, and his heat mitigation is apparently not all that great. Still, we’ve yet to face something this serious before and so I’m inclined to think something’s hinky here. She’s level 35, and despite the one level difference we were all on top of our game last night.

Even still, there was little to nothing we could do and eventually gave up trying to get past her. It was especially annoying when her aggro radius extended up the stairs and she jumped our Wizard for no reason that we could particularly see. Feh. After several ass-handings, we decided to do some grinding on the golems that are strewn all about Castle Nek’s second floor.

That was the part we had fun at, and even managed to kill Elicia. Why she was just hanging around on the battlements confuses me, but whatchagonnado. This is what I don’t get, also: she was the same level as her sister, and was certainly a challenge for my healing capabilities. Just the same, we managed to bring her down without weeping, moaning, or gnashing of teeth. Wth?

While we were grinding on the golems, we played with the promised-by-Mr.-Hartsman quest sharing feature. It worked quite well, I thought. I’m looking forward to having a UI that has a ’share quest’ button so I can participate. :) Stupid custom uis. I love that this was included, and Brian (our SK tank) was pleased by the savable graphics/options settings.

I’ll be honest; we were discouraged. The plan for next week is to go do the access quests for Zek and Enchanted lands, and come back to the sisters later. Unless anyone can offer up a reason why we suck so bad, I’m not sure ‘later’ will ever come.

But that’s okay … we really did have a good time. Such a good time, in fact, that we talked again about standardizing on expansions. I have been researching Zek and Enchanted lands, and it looks like once we’re up into the 40s we really want to be heading to the Desert of Flames zones to continue leveling. My cohorts were open to discussion of Echoes of Faydwer as a purchase, and we may even explore the depths of Splitpaw at some point. All very exciting.

I’m well and truly cheesed: I really want to do the Faydark when we get to the appropriate levels. :) Here’s hoping we keep the enthusiasm momentum from the last few weeks going as we move forward.