Instances Galore
stargrace 
Yesterday was one of those very busy days in EQ2. It was wonderful, because they don’t happen too often for me. First of all, I teamed up with Kasul from Nostalgia, and he and I (as my coercer mentored) finished off two heritage quests for the guild, the guise of the deceiver, and the fishbone earring. Nostalgia 2.0 dinged 11, 12, and 13. Kasul also killed the tide octopus in Cove of Decay granting him the polished granite tomahawk and a bunch more status.
Once that was done I headed to a few instances, to check out SOE’s recent update that allows you to get guild status on completion of an instance. In other words, the final name gives status now. I did Obelisk of Blight just for fun (the entire run took 15 minutes with three of us) and Crypt of Valdoons. Instances barely anyone adventures in any more. 1203 guild status or so was the reward. Crafting would have been faster.
After those two quick instances a group was formed for Vaults of Eternal Sleep, in Jarsath Wastes. Nothing of significance dropped (besides the mobs) but it was still fun.
After that I headed to the newly revamped Runnyeye – and was sorely disappointed. There were no deaths the entire time (not that I wanted any) except for one pull on the final x2 mob (and we had no mezer so we tanked all the adds plus the x2 at once). The key to the encounter is simple – cure. That’s right, in order to make this encounter infinitely easier healers just have to do their job and cure every single dot that lands on the tank. If you leave a dot on there for longer then the .5 of a second it should be, you’ll wipe. Cure them instantly though and the encounter is smooth as pie – with no enchanter.
The list above is all the loot we got in Runnyeye aside from the final encounter that dropped a fabled bracelet for melee. Arysh looted it all – and promptly transmuted every single piece.
Ouch.
It was either not an upgrade for anyone, or it was a piece of caster gear and we didn’t have a single caster in group. We didn’t see a single master spell drop, and the whole zone left me feeling as though I was power leveling an alt through the original Runnyeye rather then exploring a new dangerous zone. Of course, I was with a team of mythical / vp geared people. Shadowknight tank, a templar, swashbuckler, dirge, assassin, and myself as warden (the only one there still wearing treasured and only level 79). Take your ‘average’ EQ2 player and I’m sure the zone is a lot more challenging.
What did make the zone fun for me were the two quests within it. Too bad they’re not repeatable. You get two house items, the fun bowl of eyes pictured above (more like a pot in size now that I think about it, a cauldron) and a hanging eyeball that I placed upstairs in the garden, because doesn’t that location just scream ‘giant eyeball goes here.’
It was still a great night, and I had a lot of fun. Remembered why I enjoy the game. Tonight is Nostalgia night, and I’m looking forward to that. No reason why I can’t play both games as the whim takes me. I did also managed to get Silhouette a few crafting levels (Ok, by a few I think I mean one) which was nice. The carpenter has been on hold for so long now. Time to get cracking so I can get all sorts of new house item pretties made! Her 5-room Gorowyn house is decidedly empty.