Everyone has that one zone, that no matter who you’re playing, you always want to go back. No matter if you’re on your main, or your 10th alt (I don’t know anyone like that.. honestly..) it’s just one of those places. For me, that zone is Living Tombs – and subsequently, Silent City.
The zones are part of the Desert of Flames expansion and honestly when it first came out, I wasn’t that impressed. The expansion is well known for it’s Silver and Gold dragons, as well as it’s quest chain for Godking – which people rarely do these days because it requires access to the end raid zone and that requires farming eyes.
Oh how I dreaded farming eyes. Everyone did, in fact. The guild used to be filled with mysterious LD’ers and people suddenly complained of storms brewing near them any time we mentioned farming eyes.
Silent City used to require access. It was of course removed once the expansion was no longer new and shiny as a way to entice people to continue to use the older zones. Today for my troubador epic I had to pick up a few languages, one being
- Uruvanian from Words of Air
And the other being
I know, how much of a slacker am I for not having those two quests already completed. Anyhow, the Uruvanian language I finished quickly enough up in Shimmering Citadel, killing handfulls of Dijin to learn it. The Death’s Whisper language I headed to Living Tombs to complete, grabbing shinies along the way. I’m a ratonga, what did you expect.
The zone is just beautiful, especially if you turn on your lighting. Glimmering runes and smooth stone as far as the eye can see. There are quests for this zone as well as Silent City, though again I’m not sure if anyone does them any more.
I don’t think I ever really began liking these zones until KoS (Kingdom of Sky) came out – which was an expansion I disliked a whole lot. Jumping around from island to island and requiring a port up just did not settle well with me. It did too much to break the “world” of Norrath up, and further felt like a bunch of “zones”separate from one another that I had to travel to. Aside from the quests on the main island, and of course the claymore chain, I just felt it was lacking. Nothing really stood out to me as being beautiful, the dungeons were all just cut and paste from one another including the raid zones, with only the final one being different from the rest.
Anyhow, back to work on my troubador epic. I just had a sudden urge to post about these ‘older’ zones I’d been adventuring to. I miss these places.
Great article! Makes me wish I could find a lowbie group who would actually want to go Living Tombs or Silent City again!
Though it’s visually bland and the loot leaves a lot to be desired in comparison with the stuff a few levels up, Runnyeye will always be special to me, just because it’s easy enough and fast enough to level from mid 30s through to the mid 40s, often doing 2 runs within 2 hours or less. Fantastic. The 2 seperate boss instances give a greater chance to ‘go out with a bang’ even if a group member is on lockout on one, the other is available. Newcomers to the zone are always impressed with it’s seemingly complex layout and new tank’s are challenged by some of the most difficult pulls for the tier in the game(Runnyeye Chef!). <3 Runnyeye always and forever.
Desert of Flames. By far my favoritest expansion EVER! I loved the GodKing quest line. I’ve run five successful raids through there, including a double raid one night (two raid groups at the same time) and I HATE farming eyes. But I think it is the best quest line SOE has ever done. It tied together just about EVERY zone in the expansion and I think that is awesome. I wish they would do more content like that.