It’s a Wednesday, and I haven’t post about last week and this past weekend’s EQ2 adventuring. If I don’t get to it today, I’ll be really quite behind.

It’s been an exciting week, actually. New zones means new crafting (my wife’s favorite thing in the game), and crafting means gathering. So not only did we play in our usual slot last Wednesday, we’ve actually play three times since then. Saturday we played for many hours just gathering up materials, not really questing, and having a good time. Our Necromancer wasn’t there, so we kept things on the quiet. Monday we did the same, with a bit more militant bent. We were our full party of four again, so we interspersed gathering with bug/bear/boar/turtle/ slaying in Enchanted Lands.

It’s been a good time of late. I think we’re all really enjoying it full on again, and while there was talk earlier of us not necessarily making it to the level cap, I think that’s a foregone conclusion now. Everyone has agreed to standardize on the Echoes of Faydwer expansion, so soon enough we’ll be hitting the DoF content for levels 40+. Good times! Hell, at this rate we may even be at max level when RoK comes out! WoW was the first expansion I was ‘ready’ for … it would be exciting to have a regular group to explore a new expansion with in the manner it is intended. Woot!

But, I get ahead of myself …

Last week we broke free finally of the tier of zones we’d been exploring (Nek and the Steppes), and sallied forth to Zek and Enchanted Lands. We wanted to mark the occasion, so we decided to try “Maid For the Mists” again. The former access-quest for the Enchanted lands had kicked our butts a few times already, as I’ve previously discussed. With a few more levels and some new spells, we figured we could give it a shot.

Of course, what we figured out was that we’d just been following the wrong strategy. The info I could dig up said to ’stay all the way to the far side of the boat’ so that Lord Zarvon doesn’t throw the tank across the boat. What the info didn’t specify was which side is the far side. The last time we tried it, we were all perched on the forecastle … and got creamed why Zarvon threw Brian the SK to the back of the boat. Now, had I been thinking at the time I would have realized we needed to stand at the ships *aft*, but by then it was 2am and we decided to give up. This time around, we stayed in the back, did all the pulls by the numbers, and burned Zarvon down like gangbusters.

Frustratingly, we didn’t get our just desserts from finishing it anyway. According to the July 20th, 2005 patch notes:

“The access quests that were restricting travel to the Orcish Wastes, the Enchanted Lands, the Feerrott, Everfrost, and Lavastorm are now optional and provide item rewards. After you complete any of these quests (or if you have done so in the past), speak to Scholar Milnik on the docks of the Thundering Steppes to receive your reward. All boat rides associated with the overland access quests are now instanced adventures that can be repeated once you have completed the quests.”

We knew it was optional, but figured mebbe Scholar Milnik might have a nice momento of the event for us. Nothing. Wouldn’t even give us the time of day. Further research showed that the quest reward has been broken since sometime in early 2006 so … no love for us. Still, we did it, and that’s the important part.

With that out of the way, we turned to Zek. A bunch of people here on the site suggested we do Zek instead of Enchanted lands, so that was where we got started. I’ve been using the site EQ2i as a sort of travel guide in cases where we get confused, but this time around I decided to make use of the questing timeline they have associated with every zone.

It took us some time to get enquested, but once we were out beyond the walls of the fortress in Zek it was a blast. We were slaying Orcs like some sort of dedicated orc-slaying machine. It helped a lot that killing one Orc in the encampment helped with like three or four quests at a time, and we went back into the fort twice to turn in our completions and get new tasks. Unfortunately, that’s about all we had time for that night, and we retired without a ton of content done in the zone.

Saturday’s afternoon resource-gathering jamboree was sort of an impromptu thing. My wife Katie, our friend Brian, and I were all online and not doing anything in particular (I was taking a break from a long writing session), and so we decided to hop in. We ended up spending waaay waaay too much time wandering around Enchanted Lands. The gathering there is phenomenal, better than any zone we’ve seen since Commonlands. Lots of nodes all clustered together in one area, with few or no aggro-able critters near to hand. It was great. After a short time getting set up I needed to get back to writing, so I put my Inquisitor on /follow. I chatted with the happy gatherers while they did their thing, and got some much-needed work done. Great experience, and not one that I’ve ever really had before. The bennies of a regular group are six kinds of hawesome.

One thing I did look away from my article long enough to do was explore the entrance to Rivervale. Rivervale, in EQLive, was a place Katie and I spent a great deal of time. We played Haflings in that game, and so Misty Thicket, Rivervale, Runnyeye, etc, all have a lot of meaning for us. It was fricking awesome to see buildings from the old zone in EQ2 graphics, and look forward to the possibility of actually adventuring in the zone. That got me really excited for Kunark later this year. I spent a ridiculous amount of time at the Lake of Ill Omen. I was looking forward to seeing Crushbone, but for some reason Rivervale really hit it home for me, for the first time, that I’ll really get to experience some of my favorite EQ places all over again. Good stuff.

Our second atypical session in the last week occurred Monday night. Again, I needed a break from writing (though a different article this time), and all four of us were thankfully not busy. We’d enjoyed Enchanted Lands so much on Saturday that instead of heading to Zek we decided to bust out the bear-killing in the wooded zone of flitting fairies and bulky turtles.

We got a lot of questing done, again. The local wildlife is the focus for most of the kill-quests, and for the most part they’re no match for our mad phat tactics and teamwork. We did have a TPK at one point when a heroic bear pinned us down right on top of the spawn location for his kinds. We can handle two or three heroics around our level, but five … not so much.

Unfortunately, while we enjoyed ourselves we were not without complaints that night. The most addled, strangest, least sensical thing I encountered was the realization that coin adds your carried weight. Yes, I realize this is something I should have figured out around level 10 or so, but I’m a slow puppy. Not as slow as that choice, though: why should I be penalized for carrying around all the copper mobs give me? It was a simple matter to exchange up to higher denominations at the bank, but why should I have to worry about it in the first place? It’s realistic, yes, but ‘realism’ in a game where you can be a fluttering faerie who wields a giant broadsword seems a bit out of place. Most of all: it doesn’t seem fun. I’ve honestly sat here trying to think of a way that money weighing you down could be fun, and I got nothing.

I’m sure there were reasons it was originally included in the game, but I’m confused as to why it’s still there. An additional thing our Necro pointed out: when I buy things, why doesn’t it purchase out of my lower-denomination coins first? If something is 2 gold and I have enough copper for 4 gold, It seems like it would just take it out of the copper, right? Instead, it takes it out of your gold column. Unpleasant.

We’re playing again tonight, of course, and I’m on the cusp of level 38. We’re proceeding at a good pace again, and everyone should have Echoes of Faydwer within the next week or so. By late next month I expect we’ll be bouncing around on magic carpets! Good times!