Dragons of Norrath Progression and Missions
stargrace 
Yesterday was all about progression through Dragons of Norrath, which was an expansion that released February 2005, so it’s quite old now. Ultann finished (most) of his unpacking, and managed to squeeze a few hours in game which was nice. My happy little trio headed to Lavastorm, and then debated which camp we were going to follow. Ninga already had his faction with the goodies, while Ultann (who was actually on his shadowknight for the evening) had none and though I’ve done the DoN missions before, I apparently also had not worked any faction. I believe at the time I was advised against turning in my tokens so that I could obtain crystals from both camps and purchase whatever it was I wanted from the merchants.
Speaking of purchases, that was why we were doing the DoN bits to begin with. Not only does the progression reward special unlocked aa (and regular aa of course) and spells, but one of the merchants also sells a pet focus item that I wanted. This lets me cast more powerful pets – and the ‘nice’ ones are super expensive, so this free one that Ninga happened to find was absolutely perfect.
You can find a fairly clear walkthrough for the progression here on Zam – but keep in mind that once you’ve completed the first tier, you have to earn more faction for the second tier.
We did missions for the evening, and trapsed through Lavaspinner’s Lair, Stillmoon Temple, The Accursed Nest, Thundercrest Isles, and Tirranun’s Delve, as well as our home base camp in Lavastorm, and The Broodlands. It was a lot of fun, and my two girls earned a lot of achievements. Kameeko managed to finish off the craft aa that allows you to raise more then one craft over 200, so she can now begin to work on all of them. Next I’ll be turning all of those into reduced failures. I haven’t decided the method I want to take yet in leveling them, I was contemplating brewing and baking simply because I dislike purchasing so much food and drink on both of my characters. We’ll see how that goes though. Tailoring and smithing are high up on my virtual list, and pottery near the bottom but still something I want to complete.
Not sure what this Wednesday evening will bring, but I’m sure it will be fun, and I’ll write all about it tomorrow morning as always. On an unrelated note – EQ2 has some amazing changes and revamps coming in their next update, and I’ll be sure to write about that too. I’ve always loved the original Lavastorm in EQ2 but felt it was sorely neglected from simply being outdated. If the Everfrost revamp was any indication, Lavastorm will be exceptionally popular and players will once again frequent it as they should. More on that later!
Yesterday was a little bit of everything all done throughout the course of the day. I don’t remember what order it was done in, but it was all fun. I spent the late morning and early afternoon taking my brother out for pho here in the city, which was fantastic. After logging into EQ, Ninga decided I needed to hit level 72 on my necromancer so that she could purchase her newest pet from the vendor in Direwind. While every other spell may have a ‘level’ to it (ie: Rk, RkII, RkIII) the pets do not, so purchasing them from the vendor is perfectly ok. We hung out in the pit of Valdeholm, which is the level 70 hotzone, and it didn’t take too long before I’d managed to collect quite a few aa on Kameeko (the enchanter) and ding 72 on Minxes. Kameeko should be saving her aa to get useful helpful things for leveling up with the group – but instead she’s my crafting character, so after maxing out jewel crafting, I maxed out salvage, and then started putting points into unlocking other crafts above the 200 trivial mark (two to date). Once that is completed I’ll start putting my points into not failing those other crafts, and hopefully I’ll be working on getting them to 300. I haven’t decided if I am going to do the evolving trophies for all of the crafts or not – ideally I’d like to. We’ll see how that goes though. The trophies tend to be a pain in the arse, and they may just take up inventory space, not sure. I wish there were a way to combine all of the trophies into one big mega trophy. For all I know there may be. 
Someone commented yesterday on my xfire numbers for EQ over the past week – and I had to laugh. I gently reminded them that in order to set up a trader in EQ you still have to be constantly online, so I’ve been leaving my computer on while my trader sits in the bazaar and does her thing. Spells are expensive after all, and I’m still getting back into the swing of things. From that stemmed a conversation about how ‘easy’ things appear to be in EQ now, and whether or not EQ is still the same immersing game that it used to be.