Yesterday was a huge flurry of activity, and I had a blast being a part of it. First of all, a new lore book was implemented yesterday morning, releasing more information about the newest expansion slated to go live in February. The books release with a puzzle for players to figure out – the first one involved an instance in Barren Sky, and the second one was far more involved. It first required players to decipher shards written in the Erudite language and then piece them together. It also required finished players to collect five portions of a key – once center piece that would allow you to see the four remaining sides. I’m not going to give the quest away, but if you’re interested in figuring it out take a look on the Eq2players forums, head to the “History and Lore” section, and look for a post titled “Ow!! My head!”
Once people had the key portions, it was time to figure out what and where the item was that it unlocked. This is where the majority of folks got stuck, the clues were vague. It mentioned something about the book being anchored to a small piece that broke off of something larger due to a recent impact (recent being irrelevant here because we were unsure of when the letter was written to begin with, for all we knew something that happened 500 years ago was recent). It was also magical, because the one writing the entry could scry it from Barren Sky.
12 hours later and the book had still not been found. It was fantastic. I was in the befallen.lore channel as well as their voice channel, listening to everyone toss forth their ideas. It was amazing to hear the thought process. As the night went on people were beginning to feel a little more frustrated, so Kiara (little dark elf minx that she is) dropped some hints – one of them even being my own tweet that I had no idea was related to the area the book was located in (doh) even with the hints everything was still pretty obscure.
These live events are what I love to see, everyone getting along together to reach a common goal. Hamal did an amazing job translating tablets, and I was just so proud to see everyone across multiple servers working together. I didn’t get a whole lot of time to play (again, this is crunch week before work deadlines so I’m not in game as often as I’d like) but it was great to feel as though I was a part of things none the less.
I had to go to sleep before I managed to track down the book – but I went to the location this morning and picked it up, adding it to the collection of ‘rare’ books in my library. If you didn’t manage to complete the quest for the first book, you can find it sold on sages in the North Freeport and South Qeynos mage towers.
Happy questing, I’ll see you in Norrath!