Back and Forth
stargrace 
Yesterday was a pretty good day. I spent most of it flip flopping between EQ1 and EQ2, which I suppose is quite usual for me. I started out in EQ2. Invited a few new members to Nostalgia, and the guild dinged level 5 opening up our first bit of city merchant goodies. It was easy enough to get, since Stargrace (the 80 provisioner) gets 1.5k status for every writ she does, and the provisioner rush orders fly by. Plus since we’re such a low level, it only took four writs to get us a level and a half. At least now people can see our guild tag when they look at us. I also managed to ding 79 on the coercer, and finished the three factions she needs in order to quest for her Jarsath Wastes hammer. I remember doing this hammer on my rogue in EQ1. I had to work faction, a lot of faction. You turn in whips from local sarnak to the skeletons, and then once you’re done working up your faction it’s a simple little quest to complete it. I remember being so proud when I’d finally finished. One of the raid ‘requirements’ was to have a viable means of getting home again once you were done for the evening. Since the aa that sends you home was not out yet, that meant gate potions, or whatever else you could find that could port you. When Kuron, Tipa, and myself headed to Chardok to check on the royalties the hammer came in handy for me to get out without having to walk through the entire zone (again, and possibly dying to traps).
Next goal is of course to get the coercer to 80. Finish her Thuuga item, and start her epic. I also did the evil aligned quests that came out with GU45. Running around Timerous Deep spreading plague and blight made me feel right at home. A new house item (a book) and a fancy back scratcher (that coats you with flies when you wear it) were my rewards. Of course just as soon as I get settled in EQ2, I feel an incredible urge to wander back over to EQ1.
Lackey was on with his magician and we quickly teamed up, me playing my cleric. He was already in Upper Guk, and I headed that way. In typical Stargrace fashion I forgot how to get there. The PoK map may say Guktan, but the stone says Grobb. Either way, that’s where I was headed. We made our way down to the spawn area of ‘an ancient croc’.
Illia’s Everquest Beastiary says this about the mob: ”
The Ancient Croc is probably second only to the Shin Lord in terms of popularity. The Ancient Crocodile can be found in the very back of Guk, near the two watery enterances to Lower Guk.
He hits for 72 Max, but has relatively low HP for something which hits that hard.”
I had to laugh. The item he drops that was most sought after way back when are his gatorscale sleeves. They have +4 int, 15hp, and enchantment I. which means they reduce the cast time of long beneficial spells. The next comment below the explanation of the mob was even more endearing to me:
“Could a 34 pally farm this place and get some ok loot?”
Of course, it was posted back in 2003. Before Crescent Reach made its way into game and gave lowbies a new area with new loot. Above is what gear looks like ‘now’ in the newer zones. They actually have stats. A lot of stats. It dropped off of some random mob in Blightfire Moors.
Ah how things have changed. It’s nice to say ‘I won’t use any of that stuff, I don’t NEED any of that stuff’ but lets be honest here. It’s pretty. It’s shiny. We wants it. It’s natural to want to gear your character up to the best of your ability. We’re not talking twinking it out by means of bazaar, but quested items, loots and drops you can obtain yourself. We want what we can work for, and feel proud about.
We camped that croc spot last night for an hour and a half – spawned the ancient once. The sleeves dropped, and Lackey was all excited about it, until he saw his sleeves he was currently wearing (which is DE cultural armor) vs. the ones the croc dropped. His have 20 health/mana/end and +3-5 to all stats, plus a few saves. Hard to compare some of the old world drops with the new world items.
Part of me almost wishes devs took the time to revamp every single old world drop so that it could compete with the new world zones – so that they’re not constantly barren where no one has any interest in hanging out (Nostalgia the Guild being the exception to that). On the other hand, it’s a huge exciting thing to be able to go back and see these old items that used to be “so uber” back in the day. Brings back a whole lot of memories, that’s for sure.
Tonight is our weekly meeting of Nostalgia, and I’m looking forward to it. Fingers are crossed that I’ll get the chance to group with my favorite warrior and my favorite ranger (not to mention my favorite shaman, druid, wizard, heck wait everyone is my favorite), but if Tipa’s on tank duty it probably won’t work out that way. I’m also secretly hoping I may get to play my cleric (she’s fast approaching levels where I won’t be able to solo / duo quite so easily for my experience, and I’ve managed to keep her up with Nostalgia thus far for levels ‘just in case’) but the necromancer is always a lot of fun too. We’ll see how it goes, no doubt I’ll write about that tomorrow morning. We’re doing our Butcherblock LDoN’s in an effort to slow down the leveling and earn some more points. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!