Crafter Epic.. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly..

SPOILER don’t read if you don’t want to know!

By now you’ve all probably found out that the crafter epic starts in Bathezid’s Watch. You need to have some faction before they’ll talk to you. I know you don’t need max, but I’m not sure the specifics yet. It worked fine with -17,000 for me. You talk to an npc standing by the forges, who asks for some help with supplies. He sends you on a little quest to make 20 items — and pays you 31g which means they take 69g of your hard earned money.

After you complete that little quest, they want to hear about the shattered lands and what’s been going on. You respond with one of five answers, and none of them lead anywhere except for the talk of Rivervale. He tells you about th cabbageleaf family- and in my specific case, about some jewelry that they made, suggesting I go check it out.

So I wandered to The Fool’s Gold, the tavern right close to the entrance of Rivervale. Find one Cabbageleaf with a quest icon, who decides that she’ll help me- if I can get her some honey. It’s not that simple though, of course not.

First I have to find a way to get into that hive (drafling tower) undetected. So she sends you to Steamfont mountains, to talk to an npc there, a gnome, who agrees to help you if of course you help him. He sends you running around for bits and pieces to create a smoke bomb type contraption that will knock out the bixie. You have to collect piece from Steamfont, look along the walls that lead towards loping plains. They’re clickies, the power source right before the zone. Head into Loping and you’ll want to go to the village, in the graveyard is where you’ll find your plant harvests. They can be targeted with tab.

Return all those to steamfont, get your smoke machine, head back to Rivervale. Lots of walking, bring good shoes.

You’ll get ported into a special crafter instance of drafling tower, which for me was filled with level 93^^^ heroics. Joy. Smoke bomb them before they can hit you and you can walk past them harmlessly. If you’re lucky you’ll have EQII maps, follow the left path, and in the center of the room not too far is your honey. Collect some of that, and use your necklace to port back to Rivervale.

Of course the journey doesn’t end there. Oh no. The quest differs for some people I believe, but for my jeweler the rest of the quest looked like this:

Head to Maj’Dul, and find someone in an observatory tower who can help you out further. Zone into the Tower of the Moon, and upstairs an npc tells you that there are recipe book pages in the library, but be careful because they don’t like strangers there. Great. They were not kidding. Zone into a special instance where the door is now open at the front right hand side as you enter Maj’Dul, and you’ll be faced with a library. Lots of books. Lots of very angry librarians. To your left and right are book shelves with clicky books. Gather a few. Wait, gather more then a few, gather a good few. Hotkey them in easy reach, and WHOMP throw them at those mean nasty librarians. That’s right, abuse those books and throw them.

The quest wants you to collect 4 pages. They’re all on the shelves in the basement on the right hand side. Knock out the librarians as you go, they turn agro again in one minute, so collect a few, run back to the stairs, if you have to. This part was the bane of my evening, I died at least 12 times, and when you die, you loose your harvested pages, and get to start all over again, and again, and again.

Finally, you manage to snag all four pages, and you’ve got to put them together. Go back upstairs and on the bookshelf to your right you’ll find a clicky with a recipe book there to fix the loose pages. Scribe that, level 100 recipe. With those four pages you collected you can create the object you need. Head back to Rivervale with all of that done, and you’ll get a recipe unique to your tradeskill class that she’s shared with you. Anyone who played EQ1 remembers these ingredients:

• Blessed Fishing Rod
• Celestial Solvent
• Ceremonial Solstice Robe
• Mistletoe Cutting Sickle
• Misty Thicket Picnic Basket
• Protection of the Cabbage Spell
• Ruby-Encrusted Stein
• Smithy Hammer
• Demi-Sec Champagne

With your unique recipe you cheer to yourself, not really looking at the quest. Then, the smile slowly fades. You’ve got to be kidding. It can’t be. Oh, but it is.

You need to commission 8 other crafters, for 8 other lore no trade parts. One from each crafter + your own piece. Oh. @#$%.

Each combine uses a T5 rare (and if you’re lucky enough, your server still has some priced fairly cheap, on Najena, everything was bought up by one rude crafter– not me, and re-sold for 6p each). They also each use two smoldering materials, and two scintillating materials. Flowers will work in exchange if someone bought up all those too and is pricing them at 60g each.

That’s the step I’m on right now. As of this moment I’ve got 5/9 pieces, and it’s a long long night. I need an alchemist, a woodworker, a carpenter, and a weaponsmith to finish my epic. At least, I think it’s the end. I hope it’s the end. I’m praying it’s the end. It’s probably not the end.. *sighs*

I was disappointed to see that the valentines stuff didn’t make it in, though I suppose they only had room for so much today. Maybe tomorrow? Other then the crafter epic, which is about all I’ve been working on, the channels have been spammed with “where’s my epic starter!” “I want to know such and such about my epic” etc etc. for all those adventurers out there. It’s crazy. A good portion of me is thinking I should have just left EQII alone tonight.

On the plus side. I did disco everything up to this portion of the quest. There are other crafters ahead of me now I’m sure since guilds have advantages of knowing people who, you know, craft. Which I don’t have available. Ah well. I’m happy I got this far!