Nov 29
Up Against the Grind
I’m at a crux-point in my EQ2 gaming. I’ve never been more frustrated with the game than I am at the moment. Call it jealousy if you like, as I don’t have a character high enough level to be working the Kunark content. Call it burnout, as we’ve now been playing the game for well over a year. Call it MMOADD, because I’m sure there’s some of that too.
Whatever you want to call it, it sucks. My reaction to the prospect of dealing with Maj’dul is one of horror, and to Everfrost - profound disappointment. This is worse than dragging myself through Stranglethorn Vale for the fourth or fifth time; I feel as though I’ve gotten to a dead zone of content. My only hope is the Lesser Faydark, a zone I’m entirely hopeful I don’t burn out on as well. Let’s run down the horror, my issues, and possible solutions. While I’m at it, I’ll weigh in on a recent tempest in a teapot that I think is relevant to this issue.
So, a quick recap if you haven’t been closely following my party’s EQ2 exploits:
- We level through Steamfont Mountains to about 44, and run out of quests for the most part.
- Seeing that it’s an appropriate level and wanting to try out content from that expansion, we head to the Sinking Sands and the Desert of Flames.
- SS questing is nice enough, but upon reaching Maj’dul we experience angst and horror at the strange factioning of the city and weird questing.
Feeling more than a little bit burned by DoF, I lead our merry party back to the content of launch EQ2 - the zone of Everfrost. It wasn’t until we actually got to Everfrost and I began doing some more research that I realized EF was constructed in the vein of EQ1-style high-end content. IE: Get in a group, pull mobs, level, rinse, repeat. Unlike the quest-heavy content of Steamfont (or even Commonlands) there are just a few worthy questlines in EF, most of them repeatable whack the foozle excuses.
My party is a fairly amiable bunch, though, and so we headed into the driving snow to whack some foozles. What followed was (though I love my party) the most boring … session … ever. I’m sorry, I know I played a bit of EQ back in the day, I know that I played SWG and DAoC and liked them both … but random killing of mobs for no purpose whatsoever just doesn’t cut it for me in 2007. It was dead boring, and highly frustrating. The worst was the theming. Wave after wave of wolves, and rams, with a couple of big lizards thrown in to boot. It was deadly boring.
Last week we migrated yet again, this time to the zone of Lesser Faydark. There … finally … we found some kind of solace. We’re about level 46 or so, and the ambiant mobs are around level 50-53. As a group, this is fine for us; as long as we stay on top of things we can take out mobs in ones and twos. This netted us some fairly decent xp (most of us gained about a level’s worth in our three hours of gaming), and overall the environment is much more pleasant than Everfrost. I hate those damned butterfly-dragons, though. Died *so* many times.
For me, though, this is all still kind of a blah solution. I fricking hate the mindless killing method of leveling up. Quests have been in MMOGs since the days of ‘yore’, and even back when they were kind of crappy I much preferred to use them as a compass for my gameplay. Hanging out with my friends is fun, but mindlessly slaughtering mobs for no particular reason really rains on my social enjoyment parade. This stands in stark contrast to a sizeable portion of the EQ2 community, who was up in arms recently about the poor dungeon grouping xp rewards vs. solo questing. The devs have since ‘corrected’ this, making group grinding slightly more profitable than solo questing.
I guess … to each there own, right? For me, though, I love the chance to participate in the game’s story. Participating in the game’s story *as a group* is even better; it’s the reason I signed up to do this stuff with my fellows in the first place. And for the most part the RoK expansion seems to get that. Solo content is strong enough (and challenging enough) to offer equal reward to soloers, duos, and even full-fledged groups … so why do you need to cater to group grinders? I get wanting to see Karnor’s, but aren’t there quests in there? Shouldn’t quests into the castle be ultra-rewarding? Shouldn’t the experience of killing the mobs you need to for the quests + the quest xp == plenty of dings for all?
I don’t get it, I guess. Why get uppity about people soloing their way to high levels? It’s a very ‘traditional’, very “EQ Live” view of the world, and one that I thought people were mostly getting over. Bah.
We’re off this week because our SK and Necro are off on some damned fool crusade, but next week we’re back to the mindless grind. We’ll see how long I can stand it before I snap.
8 Comments so far
There are two quest lines that I know of in KC, and neither was rewarding enough for the groups I was in to stay there long.
Re: Everfrost, there’s three instances and the dungeon of Permafrost which itself contains another instance. Though the zone itself isn’t that exciting — I’ve never spent much time there aside from doing the HQs that go through there — you might like the instances. One’s a solo instance, but the other two are group ones; the Menagerie is a lot of fun, and fairly short.
Re: Lesser Faydark — be sure to get the quest line from the Nybright camp near the Loping Plains zone. You should have some fun with that, especially once you get to taking on the heroic dark elves; the dovetailing monk quest line has you killing that guy, and in the end you get to take sides in a confrontation between the monks and the inkies.
Also, you might be the right level for the Mines of Meldrath instance in Steamfont, and the massive dungeon of Klak’Anon, also in Steamfont. That zone is no end of fun and great loot and xp to boot.
Damn. I’d completely forgotten about Klak. That’s a really good idea.
Are there any quests associated with it I should know about?
And how the hell are there only TWO quest lines associated with a place like Karnor’s? :P
I’d think that’d be a multi-level group quest-focused hub to no end.
Yeah, you’d think that, wouldn’t you.
Oh, a lot of the Gnomeland Security quests end up in Klak’anon eventually.
I’m so suprised to hear that you find this to be a slow time for leveling! I’m playing through EQ2 for the first time as a mostly-solo Conjuror and I was tempted to turn off combat xp in my 40s because I was outleveling content before I could experience half of what was available.
Klak-anon, eastern Feerott, Everfrost, Lavastorm and Rivervale are all places I didn’t get a chance to fully explore before they turned grey to me. Just last night (I’m 65 now) I made my way into Solusek’s Eye on a Deity quest and am now dying to get into a group so I can mentor through it - it’s a breathtaking instance with an epic feel to it.
Anyway - if you are feeling stuck, one thing I’ve found useful to direct me when I’m not sure where to go next is to pick up city writs and head to that zone - every time I’ve done that I’ve found a bunch of new quests my level. Also be sure to check out eq2.wikia.com or similar for Heritage Quests available to you - there are at least 4 in the 40s-50s with nice rewards and I *really* enjoy the long, complicated quest lines.
Listen to Tipa. Heck I wish the devs would. RoK is the solo only expansion. Groups need not apply.
We’ve been fighting fairly hard on the subject of a lack of heroic questlines over on the official forums.
In the meantime, while in Lesser Faydark, make certain you run the Wu Encampment questlines before the Nybright quests. The Nybright questlines will involve actions which actually lower your Wu faction. The only way to raise Wu faction is through the Wu quests. Lower the Wu faction too much (by running the Nybright quests first), and the questgivers won’t speak to you to give you their quests.
So, run the Wu quests…then the Nybright quests.
I also recommend running the Fae Court questlines, as well as just some old fashioned brownie hunting in Northeast Lesser Fay (the named groups there have some pretty nice items that can drop for your level…but they might be a tad higher level than your group is right now).
In your upper 40’s and lower 50’s, you should start running Klak’Anon. There’s several quests from Gnomeland that eventually lead there. Also, you can look to Meldrath’s Mines (he has an instance in the Minotaur Caves that’s pretty fun) and the Court of Innovation (inside Klak’Anon).
Seeing as you’re all in the upper 40’s, I’d recommend taking your group out to Solusek’s Eye or Permafrost. Completely bypass Lavastorm and Everfrost as areas you just have to move through to get to the dungeons. Both dungeons have a decent number of quests (I particularly enjoyed several in Permafrost back in the day). Between the two though, I daresay you’ll enjoy Solusek’s Eye far more.
It can be a pain getting there the first time, but there’s a teleporter right by the front door. Once you get there the first time, you’ll be able to teleport directly to the dungeon every subsequent outing.
Solusek’s Eye is probably one of the most stunning and involved dungeons in any MMO I’ve played. It’s a HUGE dungeon, with suprising depth. It was also revamped just prior to the release of Kingdom of Sky to include a number of questlines (one of which cumulates with the “Defender of Drednever” suffix title). There’s a ton of named, and a lot of the loot was pretty nice for it’s level.
Of course, since we’re talking about questing and old dungeons which were revamped, you simply have to take a jaunt over to the Feerrott to see the Temple of Cazic Thule. Revamped about the middle of 2006, it’s a great place to get some experience and gear. There’s quite a few questlines involved in the dungeon, and more than a couple of Heritage quests (Screaming Mace, for example).
[...] much fun as our usual grindathon was, spurred on by comments Tipa made here on the site a long time ago (thanks Tipa!) we tried a few different things during our time in the whiteout as [...]