Jan 14
Klakkin’ With My Gnomies
I was lost and now I am found! I’ve been whinging on about my frustrations with EverQuest 2 for the past few weeks, and now I’m happy to say they’re resolved. See, I’m a bleeding idiot.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Last week we put in another rote grinding session, this one based in Klak’anon. We managed to get a quest completed, but it turns out we’re a few levels shy of full access to that dungeon. The ^^ fights were very, very tough. We did have more fun than just randomly grinding, though, and so I was willing to call last week a tentative success.
The problem was that it was very tentative. It was still kind of weak sauce, and there was still a lot of frustration there. Cut to earlier tonight, and we found the cure for what ailed us: actually playing the game the way we’re supposed to.
See, I’ve allowed WoW to spoil me way more than I thought I have. The danger of World of Warcraft is that it’s good to the point where you can start to get tunnel vision. “Not in WoW” syndrome is probably the best way to look at it. Leveling in World of Warcraft is primarily accomplished by completing quests and killing mobs about your level. Killing mobs at your level was crazy talk in the EQ days; when you ground, you ground on things a few levels below you to make sure you could do it longer before camping.
And so should we have been, as Brian our Shadowknight pointed out last night. He lead us to merry old Rivervale, which is now wall-to-wall with demons. Demons that are just about four levels below us, and which we can churn through at a prodigious rate. Despite the lower level, the XP of the elite critters more than makes up. Most of us got between 50-60% of a level last night. My wife and I even managed a simul-ding, both of us getting the shiny graphic after a particularly challenging fight.
I’m honestly excited; we’re almost to 50, and tantalizing close to the high-end content from Echoes of Faydwer and Kingdom of Sky. Kunark is still a long way off, but we’re rededicated … and I think we’re really going to make it. :)
5 Comments so far
(insert ‘working as intended’ joke here)
=)
“we’re rededicated … and I think we’re really going to make it.” should have perhaps been “I’m rededicated … and I think we’re really going to make it.”.
The rest of the party didn’t need rededication to the task at hand (that of getting to high level content). Sure, we were annoyed with the last few sessions, but we have a goal of playing high level content. But the three of us have never taken a single character up to high levels before and we wish to do it. Perhaps we are lucky that we have not sampled so much of the myriad of options available to us. We are content in the imperfect world that is EQ2.
–Brian (the Shadowknight from the post)
Good to hear. Rivervale is chock full of roughly 18 hojillion quests, too. So, while you’re out there working through those nightbloods, you might manage to clear out a handful of quests each session as well.
I love doing HQ’s, so while you are in there pick up the “By Crook Or By…” quest from Rukir Pineleaf (spl).
The HQ will take you to one of the coolest (and least adventured I’d guess) zones around. It’s the Drafling Tower and it no longer requires an access quest. I think it’s a mid 40s level.
[...] past few weeks, we’ve been back in the zone of Rivervale. After our time hunting the demons almost to extinction, we turned our attention to the instanced [...]