We’ve switched to playing EQ2 on Thursdays, because I really should be working on Massive Update on Wednesday nights. Pretty much all Wednesday night …

This was our first week using our new timeslot, and it was mostly a bunch of fun. On Thursday I was still very much sick; I didn’t remember most of the previous day, and I was still drugged out of my gord. I was also pissy, since my wife and I had intended to go to her folks place that night to celebrate my birthday.

Instead we stayed in, had (more) soup, and hooked up with Brian the Tank and Necrowarty to continue our loooooooong journey through the content in the Steamfont Mountains.

“What the hell?”, you must be saying to yourself. “They’re STILL bloody there!” Yeah, we are. But, pretty much every session we bang out at least one quest or two (we’re only playing for a handful of hours each week), and manage to have some fun.

We’re almost at the end of the lengthy quest chain that has you doing errands from pretty much everybody at the Gnomeland Security Headquarters. The quest of the night was It’s all Necessary, a straightforward bughunt that had us kicking some critter butt down in the Steamfont Springs area of the zone. The Harpies nesting around the outside of the springs area tried to give us a quick-trip back to the Bureau, but other than that things went off without a hitch. That puts us at Fulgation’s End, and within striking distance of leaving Steamfont for Maj’dul/Sinking Sands.

Most of the night was actually spent trying to finish a much lower level quest: Unearthing the Moon. It’s a kill and carry quest, requiring us to mine Luclinite (shards of the ex-moon) from a kobold-guarded quarry in the zone’s Southern half. And it’s driving me fricking NUTS! We’re all level 44ish, right? The quest itself is level 38 … but it’s ‘Heroic’. So, basically, we’re boned.

Here’s my beef: EQ2 quests are tuned for two VERY different situations. Either you’re soloing, or you’re in a group. A *full* group. We’re only four players strong, and without a scout class at all. (As a reminder: SK for Tank, Wizard for DPS, Necro for CC, Inquisitor for Healing) We’re constantly taunted by the idea of doing Heroic/instanced content. We’re a group, and we’re so close to it … but no. We’re just not enough of a group for EQ2’s tuning.

The basic problem is that we’re big enough to tackle individual mobs, but not big enough to survive in areas where there are Heroic mobs all over the place. This quarry, for example; we’re REALLY careful about pulls, we set up our camp like pros, we watch for patrols … but the slightest twitch and we’ve got mobs all over us. If we were six people strong the three or four critters that hit us would be no problem. As it is though, we are just not numerous enough to dish out the kind of DPS that the encounters require.

That’s the biggest problem, really: killing individual heroic mobs takes too much time for us. Brian feels bad about his DPS, I can tell, but of course it’s not his fault. He’s actually tanking like a pro now, pulling angry mobs off our Wizard (my wife) with speed and accuracy. Except for the occasionally overzealous cc attempt by the Necromancer, he’d be an MVP in the Tanking all-stars. But since he’s such a good Tank he’s just not doing that much damage, comparatively. The DoTs that the Necro and I add to the Wizard’s DPS do a lot to help … but most of the time I’m concentrating really hard during a Heroic fight with keeping the Tank’s HP in the magic yellow zone.

I know, I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth: having a regular group is a blessing, and I love playing with them. But it’s just kind of embarrassing having to pussyfoot around the edges of the group content because we’re just not ‘enough’ of a group to qualify for EQ2’s tuning. And this is Fay content too; not old world or Sands. Here’s hoping that Kunark has a little bit more flexibility when it comes to the concept of ‘group’ content.

Next week: we finish Steamfont and ready ourselves for the Sands.