Misty Thicket, home to – well. These days? Corpses. Lots and lots of corpses. I don’t even know why there are so many of them but I’m certainly not surprised that there’s an incredible amount of wild life around, I mean look at all the fresh food just falling right in front of them. This is where I found myself today. Starting out as a halfling druid by the name of Pumpkin, I was joined by Ninga from Freeport. I won’t even get into his adventure of getting to Misty Thicket because quite honestly I have no idea how you walk from point A to point B. That’s because when I first started playing EQ, Plane of Knowledge was already in full swing, and along with it all of those nice little rows of stones that told you how to get everywhere your little heart desired.
I started playing EQ in 2002, years behind when it had first released. All of those stories about setting up shop in the tunnels before there was a bazaar? I’ve heard them and never actually experienced them. That’s why I’m playing. Besides the fact that I hear everyone say over and over again “you can never go back” – I don’t believe that. This is my chance to go back. Will it be exactly the same was it once was? No of course not but I’m going to give it my best shot.
It took a little bit of effort to re-familiarize ourselves with the game. Learning boundaries and which yellow mobs were ok (Bixies, wolves, and bears? Good!) and which yellows were not ok. (RUN AWAY FROM THE SPIDER, RUN RUN). That first level was tough. I learned a few things, like the fact that armor quests were actually added later, and while the npc’s are incredibly eager for you to participate and wear something stunning – the quest is actually disabled, so throw out those containers of no trade quest pieces.
I learned (once more) to keep everything with a ‘this item can be used in tradeskills’ tag on it. Those would come in handy later – and in fact they most certainly did. My tailoring is now sitting at a proud 17 and I made myself a set of gear. Stats? We don’t need no stinking stats. Our gear has AC, and THAT means survivability. Even if I don’t have the mana to cast any more then 2 spells.
One good thing about Misty Thicket is there are a lot of bats. Lots of bats means lots of wings, and lots of wings means – you guessed it – lots of batwing crunchies. Pick up some frosting from your local baking goods vendor and stab away in an attempt to mash components together and come up with something edible. I succeeded, a few times. More often then not I failed but the combines are so cheap and simple that it really didn’t make too much of a difference.
Hours flew by and I hardly noticed. 60 people in the zone, which is a fair amount considering there are already level 20-30-40 and yes, by now even level 50 players. Down side? The public channels on Fippy Darkpaw are not currently working, so it can be hard to find people to group up with unless you’re constantly using /ooc. Once the channels are back up you’ll be able to find me on the /join twitterchat channel, or feel free to add Pumpkin to your friends list and say hello. After hours of work Ninga and I managed to claw our way to level 5 which (to me) is an astounding feat.
I can’t wait to see where our next adventures take us. I’m really hoping that we can get in on some raids and if I do you can be sure I’ll record every moment of them. Moment I’m looking forward to the most? When LDoN goes live as one of the future expansions, and people actually DO LDoN’s, because the faction / items they can get from it are upgrades, and required instead of things they can skip over.
Hopefully you all enjoy reading my stories as I do writing about them, there will be many more to come.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.
Good to see you having fun in EQ1 star! I missed the whole Everquest thing when it released and played UO instead. I missed out! Ive started on Fippy although the class I want to play isnt in yet (boo Berserker) so ive rolled a Warrior. Ill be sure to add you and say hi.
Although finding time to play in between raiding on EQ2 and playing Rift is hard :(
So much goodness all at once!
I swear if Rift wasn’t launching this week, I would be sticking with EQ/Fippy as my focus MMO for the foreseeable future.
My Gnome necro is stuck on Faydwer at the moment because the boats are still not working properly. Three times he’s gotten as far as Sister Isle in Ocean of Tears and three times he’s been stranded there until an angry pirate finally sent him back to his bind spot in Steamfont. Might end up paying a druid or wizard for a port, something I never did in the good old days!
I also loved LDON. I learned about 50% of everything I know about playing in a group in there, and 100% of how to put a group together. I hope we get a full 60-90 days of that at least.