Thanks to some very active grouping Sunday morning my druid hit level 10. Experience is pretty fast – as long as you group up. In fact that’s key to the game especially on this progression server where experience is even slower then the original. Level 10 meant Spirit of the Wolf, which is great. Level 7 was thorns and I felt pretty good. Except in the back of my mind I had this nagging itch. See, my druid was spending pretty much ALL of her time healing. Don’t get me wrong, this is something I enjoy a huge amount and something I’m quite good at. If I wanted to REALLY be a healer though I should have rolled a cleric.
This thought nagged at me all morning long, and so finally after reaching 10 on the druid I decided to create my first alt, a halfling cleric by the name of Velours. She’s now level 6 after another romp through Misty Thicket running from wasps and beetles (pictured above, fleeing). After a day of adventuring I managed to gather almost 100 bat wings and turned those into 13 crunchies (I realize the skill ups are poor when it’s trivial at 46, but purchasing frosting was pretty cheap and the combine was easy so I went with it anyhow.
I also got my tailoring to 30, making silk thread and swatches and then tattered gear as well as some padded gear which I am now sporting. I’ve banked pelts for when research finally becomes available (it’s currently removed / bugged) and I even managed to make a small bag in my tailoring attempts yesterday. I expect the numbers of players to go down drastically today since it marks the first day of ‘no more free’ accounts but I’m really hoping to still find it active. We’ll see I suppose.
I saw a lot of great twitter friends / bloggers in the /join twitterchat channel last night, including Vikund from TAGN, Zoltoon from Ark’s Ark, 4robertanderson, and Wiqd.
Before I recreated my cleric as another halfling, I tried out a dark elf. I managed to ding level 2 without ever killing anything by doing a quest located in Neriak 3rd Gate at the Rogue guild. It’s simple and cheap to do and granted me 4% xp each turn in as well as enough silver to cover the cost of the components I was buying off of a vendor. Basically you tell the rogue npc that you are a new rogue, and he gives you a container. You combine 3 snake fangs and 3 snake scales, and turn the combined bag in to him for some silver. The first time through I mentioned an ebon shield, and he gave me that as a reward first. Then sporting my new gear I proceeded to gather coin rewards. I purchased enough snake fangs and scales for about 30 turn ins – ultimately I decided to re-create in the end because I just didn’t want to play a dark elf.
I’m looking forward to getting OUT of Misty Thicket and heading some place new. There are already a LOT of level 50’s on Fippy as well as those in every other level range, so the lower level areas are clearing out a little.
I’ve been having so much fun exploring EQ again that I’ve decided to make it my main game for as long as possible. That means for as long as I can still find groups and the server is still active. Am I crazy for choosing a 12 year old game over anything new and shiny right now? Maybe. But you know what, I’m not going to get the opportunity to go back forever and some of my fondest memories come from this game. Why not enjoy it while I am excited about it and I have the chance.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!