I was a little surprised that Cyanbane and I never actually talked about EQ2 … for the EQ2 podcast. :) Just the same, I had a great talking with him and listening over the latest Daily podcast. The changes from GU 36 haven’t really affected me, but just the same there have been some shakeups in my EverQuest playing since the last time I wrote about it.

We missed a couple of sessions in June because of traveling, but suffice it to say that my last post pretty well summed up what we’ve been doing. Grind, grind, grinding forward on content in The Enchanted Lands. We made it all the way through the quest lines in the zone proper, and moved into Rivervale for some hilarity there. The only problem is that our group’s somewhat casual nature meant that we encountered a peck of trouble. The Leatherfoot Tales series of quests actually has a really interesting story; I suggest you read it if you ever decide to hit up the mini-zone.

The problem with our casual nature is that we tend to bump around, hit things, kill stuff, have fun. Rivervale is not a zone for that. While the Leatherfoot quest text is interesting, the ‘what you do’ is just a bunch of kill X quests, where X usually equals like 20 or 30 critters of a certain type. Frustratingly, these critters all spawn almost on top of one another. Wandering into an area with mobs requires that you deal with add after add after add. Pull one and you’ll get three. Fight the three and watch as it becomes five simply as mobs path into your little party. An additional worry is the prevalence of group-tuned mobs in among the less dangerous creatures. They’ll be the same level, the same model, and almost the same name as the squishies; if you don’t watch out for the triangles and brackets, you’ll have a trio of group-tuned mobs slamming your tank into next Tuesday before you know it.

To add to the annoyance, I’ve had to do a bit of educating since we got to the ‘vale. Rivervale makes heavy use of ‘placeholder’ mobs; mobs from a given family (like Blightrats) all pop in the same area, but quantities of the mob you want isn’t guaranteed to be up at any given time. Given the number of critters the Leatherfoot quests require, that means we spent a lot of time throughout June wading through creatures we didn’t even want to be killing, so their relatives could spawn and we could complete the quest.

Rivervale, therefore, requires a team that communicates in a more directed fashion, is more patient, and more careful. None of those things are us. We’re usually talking about something completely not-game-related as we galumph along, and both our tank and necro have a tendency to pull separate mobs at the same time. :)

It makes for excitement, but it’s not really tenable in Rivervale.

Since we’ve been missing sessions we did an extra one yesterday (Monday) to start to make up for lost time. We bit it probably four or five times because of one of the problems I just mentioned. The players were getting bored, annoyed, and cranky, and the tank requested a change of scenery. So, I said “Screw Rivervale!” and we high-tailed it to the docks in Nektulos. There we caught the ship and ventured forth, for the first time, into expansion territory.

I’ve futzed around with a Fae a bit, but for all intents and purposes this was the first time I’d played in expansion content. It was definitely the first time our necro and tank had been out of the old world. We traveled from the Butcherblocks, through Greater Faydark, and into the Steamfont Mountains.

Holy cats is expansion content gorgeous. I got ribbed a couple of times last night with lines along the lines of “Why were we questing in the shitty zones?” The old world was fun and all, but it’s easy to understand wherefrom they were coming. Commonlands, Nek and even The Enchanted Lands can’t hold a candle to any of the three expansion zones we moved through. They are just so gosh-darned pretty.

Given our shorty pride, the Department of Gnomeland Security was happy to have us, and we loaded up on quests for the Steamfont zone. We kicked some kobold ass, did a little tinkering, and slaughtered the local wildlife. Truth be told we didn’t spend as much time there as I would have liked; by the time we got to the Steamfonts it was kind of late … somebody missed the boat the first time through. :)

The home o’ the gnomes is where we’ll be picking things up again tomorrow, and we’ve all got our happy-hats back on thanks to the new areas to explore. Otherwise, the only thing I still need to do is go looking for one of those crafting class resetters; I want Ostimak to become a Chef, and I’ll need some help to do that.