By far one of the best quests I’ve done
Yesterday was another fun day in EQ2, and of course I stumbled over one of the best quests I’ve ever had the pleasure of doing. Now, Cordanim has some pretty nice walk throughs and information posted on the two starter quests to get to this instance, one here and then the other one here. I couldn’t figure out if he ever got around to writing about the third quest, which is inside the prison itself.
If you’re a quester to any extent, I highly recommend this chain of quests. The first one seems quite boring (I had to hunt from treasure from the beaches by the druid rings way out to the island by the lighthouse, on the other side of the zone), the second quest is fun but you’ll want a walk through if you’re impatient. The third quest.. makes everything worth while. You are sent to the prison to free the admiral. This zone does not look like any of the other zones out there. It’s a boat, docked at an island. There’s a huge metal cage type structure in the center of the island, and it’s surrounded by rujarkian orcs along with some dead pirates (gnomes none the less). Your mission (should you choose to accept!) is to run up to the (locked) doors, killing everything in your path. Letting your two gnome companions blow up the door (literally) and making your way inside, finding the key to unlock the admiral, and killing a named afterwards. Then escorting them both back to the awaiting ship.
How exciting is that. While you’re there, don’t forget to pick up the Bootstrutters guide to Ro (a book that I didn’t even know existed), one can never have enough house items. There’s also a pretty nice quest for adventurers to complete while they’re inside. Don’t make the same mistake I did though (unless you want to do the instance a second time) and kill the named to the right of the fire place first. He’s needed in the second portion of the quest, and he’s not of much use if he’s already dead. So you’ll want to head to the left of the fire place, and get the keys from the dead gnome. Unfortunately the orc prisoners all escape their cells when you do that, and before you know it you’re knee deep in some sort of orc riot (as posted above). Qutey had a little difficulty with the zone to be honest. It’s flagged as heroic though the mobs are single target down arrows, there are a whole lot of them. I’m not sure if the zone scales, but it seems to be great for those level 22-27 or so. You’re rewarded with some coin, three items (two belts and a weapon) +50 faction with the citizens of maj’dul, and of course experience / aa. Not to mention you get to explore a really fantastic zone with an amazing story line behind it.
The quest came out around the DoF period, so it’s been around for quite some time. I don’t know why there isn’t more emphasis on quests like this. I’d never actually done it before, though I have heard the odd person here and there talking about it.
I’ll probably be doing a lot of crafting for the next little while, maybe some harvesting. I’d love to be able to get my characters a little higher (Goudia specifically, sitting at 37 weaponsmith), we’ll just have to see how it goes.
Well thank you for the generous comment Mallika! That made my morning hon I honestly must say! I’ll be adding a contact page to the site since a few people now have asked how to get a hold of me, heh.
As for your comment. I know how you feel, trust me. I’ve played WoW quite a bit, I’ve got a druid and a priest and a hunter and numerous others on various servers – but the game was feeling bleh to me. I actually enjoy the game, much to the chagrin of my EQ2 peers. But WoW never kept me. For two really good reasons. The crafting, and the housing. Now, I know WoW is planning on expanding these in their newest expansion. But EQ2 has my heart so to speak as far as mmo’s go.
Which is why I write this blog. Why not write about something I’m passionate about. That, and I do have a whole heck of a lot of time on my hands *grins*
I’m glad you’ve found yourself having so much fun in EQ2 and I hope it continues you entice and excite you!
Dear Stargrace,
I didn’t find any contact information, so forgive me for writing my comments here in an unrelated entry.
I wanted to thank you for having this blog, and opening my eyes to EQ2. Your posts on crafting and houses really piqued my interest in the game, since those are the things that I’ve been wanting to find in an MMO game for a long, long time. I came into graphical MMO games late (my first experience was with WoW, and I started in November 2006), because I was still in complete and utter love with MUDs — you know, the text-based multiplayer online games that came before graphics got huge.
I fell in love with WoW almost immediately and played up until a few weeks ago, where I got to feeling a bit ‘blah’ about the game. Oh, I still like it and think it’s awesome, but I always lamented about the state of its crafting and the lack of housing (two elements I enjoy HUGELY). I tried EQ2 months ago but at that time I was still deep in my WoW-love and didn’t really give the game a chance. I hadn’t given the game a second thought until I came across your blog. As I went through the entries and focused on your crafting and housing categories, I found myself more and more interested — and began downloading the trial again. While waiting for the 7 gigabytes of files to finish, I explored other blogs and the official EQ2 forums (which are surprisingly awesome, especially compared what WoW had).
I went into the trial with an open mind this time. I chose a dark elf warden to try out, and oh … things were just lovely in the newbie area. I got hooked on all the gathering / harvesting / mining / trapping things, quickly filling my bag and bank, even getting about 7-8 rares in the process. I loved the way my warden looked as though she was dancing while casting spells. (One thing I love is the way animations in EQ2 are just as great as in WoW — that’s one of the complaints I have about other MMO games — the animations make the characters look so wooden.) I managed to complete two collections. And once I tried out the crafting, I knew that I would be buying the game. Crafting is my passion, and I did it so much that all the Hard, Very Hard, and Challenging newbie recipes turned to Easy … and received some pristine items in the meanwhile! I am excited about trying all the professions, especially carpentry (always loved making things).
As I wait for my retail box of EoF to be shipped to me here in Europe (can’t find it here, and I’d rather have discs than have to download it if I ever need to install the game again), I’ll be trying out various classes in the newbie areas. I should probably start my own EQ2 blog to chronicle my experiences, hehe.
Thank you for your blog, Stargrace. If not for you, I would never have realized that EQ2 was the place I was looking for.
Absolutely love the new layout. Very clean and professional looking – and very easy to read.
Ah yeah I was probably in the middle of it. I tried out a whole lot of designs before settling on one, heh. Annoying work.
Anyhow, the quest can be picked up in either Antonica on the Northern beach with the crabs, or in Commonlands on the docks from Heron Cogcarrier, have fun if you get to it, I know I had a blast! :)
The new layout looks nice! I stumbled upon it last night, when I am guessing you were in the middle of it, because everything looked a bit wonky. Glad everything came together nicely!
So where did you pick this quest up at? I thought all the DoF related content was 50ish ? I wish I knew there was a quest like this back when I was around that level, I just want to make sure now that I don’t miss out on it once I decide to level up an alt!
Jerrek
Oops!
Thanks for the reminder that I never did get the actual “prison” part of that quest done up! My bad!
By the way, I like your new layout, too! :)