Let’s start off today’s update with a little exercise in statistics. My Templar on Antonia Bayle hit level 70 late Friday night and is now “locked” pending our raid campaign through T7 which starts next Sunday, October 4th. I’ve got roughly 4 days 16 hours played now on this character that was created on September 1st. I figure that’s 25 days to level 1-70 with my Templar and that averages out to about 4.5 hours played per day to get the job done. It doesn’t really feel like I’ve played that much but I guess the numbers don’t lie. Even though EQ2 is much easier these days as far as leveling goes, it still takes a decent investment. Especially if you have a real job, go to college, have a family or whatever your situation may be. All in all, I’m very happy with the leveling time and enjoyed the ride all the way.
Last week SOE released game update 53 which included a whole host of changes and updates to the game. A new instance called Shard of Love was added which has an interesting story line involving Mithanel Marr and Erolissi Marr. The screen shot above shows our group battling against some rather nasty butterflies. Sounds scary, eh? The cool thing about this zone is that it scales based on level and as far as I can tell – it just drops housing items and a rare set of wings that you can equip. I wonder if the wings will let you glide like the Fae or Arasai races? Doubtful, but one can hope.
At the end of the Shard of Love, we fought Mithaniel Mar – shown above. I thought the zone was rather easy both times I did it last week but it was fun nonetheless. The last week of leveling was quite a blur. So much so, that I don’t even remember where I took the screen shot shown below. I thought the big insect guys looked cool so I figured I’d put it out there for you guys to see.
Once I hit 70, I really wanted to go through the Estate of Unrest. This zone holds many fond memories for those of us who played the original Everquest. The EQ2 version of Unrest was released with game update 32 as a free content addition to the Echoes of Faydwer expansion. Unrest is quite a time commitment as progression through the zone requires lots of keys, wandering through large hedge mazes and completion of many other mysteries.
The hedge maze is probably the biggest hallmark feature of the zone. Your group winds through these mazes to kill certain mobs which drop items that help you gain entry to the main house. Another thing about this zone is that you have to be careful harvesting shinies. Often times, someone will pick up a shiny only to have a gang of mobs appear from the trap. If you aren’t careful, this can cause a wipe in no time at all. It’s also important to stick together in this zone as it’s easy to get lost. Getting lost in here usually means death isn’t far behind.
Once you gain entry to the main house you work your way through the bar area. Once it’s clear, a sadistic bartender spawns and he’s not happy you decided to join him. After you show this guy who is boss, you stumble upon the ghost of a woman who was never able to have children. She’s locked in her bedroom being tormented by a gang of ghost toddlers – creepy. What’s creepier that ghost kids? How about the kid shown below? He just want’s to play with you…. Yeah, riiiiight.
After you clear the first few floors, you gain access to the basement. Before too long, I was face down in the dirt inside a jail cell next to the horror shown below. He was part of an encounter where random group members were ported behind prison doors. I never made it out of the jail.
There are several cool features about the basement such as a persistent mist, crazy skeleton heads and ghosts that appear on your screen which can cause you to scream or push you over the edge if you allow yourself to get lost in the experience. The instance has a lot of character and you can tell the developers at SOE put their heart and soul into this zone (no pun intended.) Seriously, I think it is some of their best work. My only gripe is that it takes forever.
The final fight, shown above, is triggered once you construct the boss from bones that you loot from random mobs in the bottom of the basement. He wasn’t too difficult and he dropped a armor set piece for our tank. When everything was done, it was pushing 3:30 am and it was time to call it a night.
Now that I’m 70, I’m working on getting more AA points and gearing up with all my Expert spells (the old Adept 3s) plus a full set of Mastercrafted gear. I’ve been exploring Kylong Plains a bit as the quest rewards are pretty strong and might be helpful for our upcoming raid plans. I’ve also been working on the Claymore quest line and plan to complete that as well as SOD in the next few weeks. The recent game update did a few other things that were neat like reduce the amount of time it takes to skill up swimming, melee skills, casting etc… That’s a life saver when you consider the increased leveling speed these days. Another neat feature that came in with the last game update is the Exp vs. AA slider. You can now move the slider to 100% AA, like I have it on now, and you combat experience rolls over into AA points. This should allow me to rack up quite a bit of AA in the near future.
I’ve had so much fun in EQ2 recently that my Aion character is still sitting at level 6. I just don’t think Aion offers enough of a new experience to warrant the time investment – especially when I’m so happy with EQ2 at the moment. I’m bummed about it though because I had a great guild lined up for that game as well. I just don’t have enough time to play everything at the level I enjoy playing these games at. I can’t really half ass games, if you know what I mean. The EQ2 community on Antonia Bayle is fantastic, I’m in a guild full of cool people and the game is just enjoyable. You guys should come join us!
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