After the harshness of Everfrost and the giant citadel, the green lushness of the Lesser Faydark was a great big relief. Especially since, at least for my wife and I, Everfrost bore far too close a resemblance to the view out the window. Early February was a cold, terrible month in Wisconsin. The chance to travel to a warm, green place – if even virtually – was fantastic. The Shortiez group was there, we saw … and we did a good number on the local plant and fairy life. We also, as a result of Tipa’s awesome assistance, are now officially a guild!

Read on for a discussion of Faydark’s secrets and the process of tagging a surly bunch of gnomes.

The first impression you get when you enter LFay is Fairy Dragons. Fairy Dragons everywheres. They’re kind of tough too, at about 54-58, and they’re layered on top of each other in a thick soup of butterfly-tastic goodness. The Fairy Dragon hatchery, at the far end of the zone from where we should have been, was our first impression of LFay – and that was bad.

The problem was that we entered the zone from GFay, when we should have been coming in from Butcherblock. Now, why that makes sense is beyond me. The zone ‘before’ LFay is Steamfont, which you need to pass through GFay to get. But … I’m not a zone layout dude. Coming through Butcherblock to LFay, you hit mobs right around the 49-53 area, fabulous for our level 50ish party. The quests in this initial area are standard fair; take out some of the plant monsters that plague the area, and make war with the Thexian solidery encamped nearby.

What’s great, though, is that you’re doing this standard fair in the middle of a children’s tale. Lesser Faydark is a realm of nature magic gone wild. Killer plants and nature spirits haunt the zones vales, walking among the giant mushrooms, oversized vines, and fantastically big flowers than seem to be everywhere in the area. It’s like Alice in Wonderland meets Dungeons and Dragons.

Moving deeper into the zone, you encounter some of the first true reputation experiences in the expansion content. Previously we’d done quests and killed mobs that changed our rep, but the Nybright family is a different animal entirely. That group of NPCs, situated as it is near the Loping Plains exit, doesn’t care whether you live or die initially. The horse waypoint at their camp is actually really easy to make kill you, if you’re not careful. (Don’t know that from personal experience at all.)

By doing quests for the family, though, you gain rep and eventually make them into your bestest pals. Vendors, the stable point, and  a bunch of other elements are unlocked by your continued good works for the family. It’s a great little rep grind (doesn’t take too long via quests), and preps you mentally for the content I know is coming down the road.

We particularly enjoyed one random kill quest given out in the camp. It’s not technically part of the family series, but it still nets you Nybright rep. Fun With Hemotoxins has you killing shambling mounds, animated plant critters. From the camp, the easiest way to complete this is to hop down into the river channel stemming from the waterfall at one end of the zone. You get to swim down this deeply inset channel, greenery stretching above and beyond and out of site on all sides, killing these cool thorny animated beasts.

Those moments are rich in LFay; the quality of the quests overall may not be up to the high standard we came to expect in Steamfont, but they’re still mighty good.

That brings us all the way up to last week, where we finally got tagged. We’re <Shortiez> for real now, with a presence on EQ2 players and an official guild website and everything. Eventually I’m going to have all of my commentary from over here over there, and hopefully some of my guildmates will chime in about our adventures as well.

Many and fervent thanks to Tipa, again, for helping us out. She actually ended up logging in with two characters at the same time so that we could grab the tag! And she didn’t even know she’d been hired at Massively yet!  Now that’s awesomeness.

Earlier this week we returned to the cold to work through more of Permafrost … which you’ll get to hear about, next time.