Exploring Tehatamani Harbor
stargrace 
Screen shot is of someones annoying boat. The fact that they own a boat is great. The problem is that they parked it RIGHT on top of the riftway (that red column in the back end of the ship). When you port in, you end up getting a ‘you are on a boat wee’ compass that shows up and if you’ve never been to this particular area before, it’s annoying. Have a little curtsey and park your boats some place else! Like NOT right on the riftway. Shesh.
I began my slow trek to 50. On some advice of a friend I made my way to Tehatamani Harbor, although I’m too low to get most of the quests there the area DOES have a fantastic story. The chunk itself is located in Qalia, bottom left hand area. A little piece of land that juts out into the ocean. It’s beautiful. There’s a group of people who belong to the Lucent Circle hanging out, they have a little camp all set up. The very first introductory quest gives you a necklace (well, it gave me one at least, two choices of them) and as you work on tasks for this group of people, you can combine the shards (rewards from tasks) and upgrade your necklace. I’ve only done the first few quests so far, but the necklace is already an upgrade for me.
The Lucent Circle is made up of Paladins who are there to right wrongs and do all that good holy stuff. Apparently they have opened recruitment to anyone who wants to help, and not everyone within their ranks are happy about that. The Lucent Circle is there to fight against the Tehatamani Empire. Basically like an old Robin Hood story, the Empire steals artifacts from other cultures and takes them for their own. They ransack and pillage civilizations and cultures, amassing great wealth. The Tehatamani are at war with the Vakrin, who were the last civilization that they stole from. They managed to get some sort of sacred artifact that gave them huge powers that they shouldn’t have.
The first task sent me to learn a little about their history, and then head off to some pyramids in the distance that were surrounded by snakes and bugs. Apparently their grounds keepers are on holiday and they want me to kill the diseased creatures. I did notice a raid mob also pathing around the pyramids (or maybe it was just a group mob, I forget what so many dots over the mobs heads mean now, it was at least five) and I stayed well clear of them. I killed 12 creatures, learned my history lesson, and upgraded my necklace. I love these types of quests, and the story is pretty good. I need to earn more rank with the Lucent Circle, so I picked up the next round of quests. They’re level 46 though, and I’m level 43 which means they’re red to me. They want me to kill more creatures, and I think I should be able to do that easily enough. I’ll need a few more levels before I advance too much further, so I’ll have to find some place a little lower to gain some experience. The next round of quests sends me back to collect some vials of liquid and take care of 100 of the icky creatures that surround the pyramids.
The kills all net me faction with the Lucent Circle as well, and there’s some nice heroic gear on a vendor if I turn in tokens to them. We’ll see how it goes!
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An ogre, a Tier’Dal, and a Gnome all walk into the Deep Forge, and the gnome turns and looks at the ogre and says ‘Oy, is it hot in here or is it just me?’
I did get a pretty nice charm slot upgrade from a quest involving the zone. I can’t remember if this quest was given to me outside or if it was the one I found inside, but it’s nice none the less. There’s also a melee version. The only thing I dislike is that this isn’t really a healer version (and there wasn’t one). The wisdom and power on a charm item really makes me happy. While playing in these zones with friends, I realize just how under geared Arysh is. The downside again to having so many alts, not concentrating on any individual one. Yes, Arysh does still have her claymore, and I do have her fabled epic, and she’s close to 10k power self buffed with 1k wisdom, but it’s the +heals and +heal crits and all of the other little unique bits that make a character ‘good’. She doesn’t have M1 of her spells, etc. So now I’m contemplating settling down, especially if I want to work on void shard quests. I love playing my healers. I’m GOOD at my healers. The problem is that my ‘main’ healer is a warden, and they are everywhere. So my line of thought says that I should try to get my templar her last few levels (she’s sitting at 77) or my defiler (even further behind, at 73) and work on one / all of the healers. I love my coercer a great deal, but I’ve played healers primarily in every mmo. 
Once we were finished in Deep Forge I took a few hours and headed over to Vanguard, then was asked if I wanted to go back to EQ2 and do another instance. I decided sure, why not. I haven’t really been to too many of the instances honestly. The group decided to head to Befallen: Halls of Forsaken (it may be halls of the forsaken, I can’t quite remember right now). This is in the Commonlands, and I’d never been there before. I wanted to do Cavern of the Afflicted (one since I’d been there before and was comfortable with it, and two because it was the daily double yesterday) but the group decided to go some place new. The zone again was quite beautiful, and we had fun figuring out what to do. Thankfully two people had been there before even if I had not. The zone wasn’t especially hard per say, we did wipe once, but only because half of the group charged ahead to destroy a statue while half of us stayed back and I wasn’t really sure what was going on. The group was a shadowknight, inquisitor, swashbuckler, illusionist, warlock, and myself as the warden. We did see a lot of ornate drops, and I did actually get a secondary item upgrade to the shield from RE2 that I was wearing. It’s one of the few upgrades I’ve actually had drop lately. The zone mostly decided it was plate night, and nothing was an upgrade for our two plate wearers. Thankfully, Arysh is a transmuter. 
I love the way the graphics are in the Moors of Ykesha. When you head to one of the very first camps, you’re in the swamp and surrounded by flies the entire time you quest. It’s these great little additions that make EverQuestII come to life, and I’ll never get tired of them (even when they lag my machine up). I still haven’t managed to get enough faction to buy the recipe books or appearance armour, but I’m getting there slowly. So far I’ve been sort of two sided about the release of TSO. On one hand it’s very pretty, with nice rewards. On the other hand this is the fourth year (going on fifth) that I’ve played EQ2 (yes, I’ve been here from the start) and it feels like I’ve done all of this before. The void shards are great for those who can manage to get a group, but for those who are unable to it’s frustrating. It’s more or less because I still don’t know anyone on Najena aside from Nostalgia and a few Siege members, and those I do know already have their static groups. I’ll have to see if I can remedy this. The only real innovation that grabbed me right away was the crafting bits and I realize I talk about crafting an exceptional amount in this blog, but that’s not the only thing I enjoy in my games. It just happens to be a large portion. 
I love crafting in Vanguard. It’s one of the most complex and interesting craft systems I’ve seen, and it’s not timed which makes it more enjoyable for me. While I can appreciate the system EQ2 has in place, some times the phone rings, or the door, or a pot boils over or some other real life interruption occurs, and in EQ2 this could mean disaster for the process. In Vanguard it just means stepping away and hitting the next button in the stage when you get back. There’s so many combinations of things you can craft, and so many different catalysts and powders and dusts and what not that you can add to each and every individual item, I just love it. There’s a LOT of crafting quests in Vanguard as well, which makes it interesting and fun. I love crafting in any game, but yes, Vanguard is my favorite. 
I also noticed another change since I’ve been gone. When you’re leveling up, as soon as you get to 20+ you’re required to save up Masterwork Sigils for your upgrade recipes. Basically this is the difference between crafting handcrafted items, and mastercrafted items (except mastercrafted items in VG are really really really nice, and sell very well). These sigils used to be VERY rare. In all my levels I only ever earned 4-5 of them. You need 8 per recipe of the current tier you’re on, and 2 less for every tier you’ve passed. There are (for me at least) three recipes to purchase that use these sigils, per tier. That’s a lot of sigils! When I started crafting yesterday I thought it may have just been dumb luck that I managed to get two on my first batch, but by the end of the craft day when I was looking at 15 sigils, I knew things must have changed. I’m not lucky, and I’m certainly not THAT lucky. I did manage to buy the T5 jewelery recipe upgrade (30g, OUCH!) so that means I can make rare jewelery for levels 40-50. Crafting also still involves help from other crafters. To make rare jewelery I use a rare gem but then I also use a truesilver sheet, which is crafted by blacksmiths. It’s nice, and it’s one of the things that have kept the community together and so strong.