Empty Hotzones and Crafting Skill Ups #EQ

EQ is still a popular game by my standards, there are a few hundred playing at any given time (all you have to do is do a /who in the bazaar or in the guild lobby to see your search cut short) but because the game is 12 years old (just about) it’s pretty rare to run into anyone unless you’re playing in the latest expansion or you hang out in the hotzones. Maybe it’s just that the hotzones this time around really suck. See, EverQuest increases the experience you earn in certain zones, convincing players to group up in a designated spot so that we’re not spread all over. For level 75 (which is about my range right now because 80 is a little too hard) this means the hot zone is Zhisza, the Shissar Sanctuary. This zone came out with the Buried Sea, one of my least favorite expansions. It’s difficult to pull, difficult to maneuver, and when Ninga and I showed up with our two trusty mercenaries there was not a single other person in the zone. As opposed to the two level 80 zones, Toskirakk and Kaesora Library which had a handful of people in each. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a group in one of those two zones before too long.

The experience may be a little slower than normal due to the mass of light blue mobs we were fighting but I DID manage to ding 82 on the necromancer, and I also managed to get 13% into my level, preventing me from losing it when I die. Notice I said when.

Before we headed out for some leveling adventures (Congratulations to Ninga for hitting level 85!) I decided to work on my crafting. I’ve always had a love hate relationship with EQ crafting. My enchanter is my designated crafting character, she is above 200 in all crafts, but has only come close to 300 in jewelcrafting, where (as of yesterday) she sits at 291. It doesn’t appear to me that the skill of crafting has increased any with House of Thule, at least my skills are still showing 291 / 300 for crafts, but I could be wrong maybe they don’t show the increase until later. In any case I learned about a few changes that didn’t make me very happy.

See, my enchanter is my crafter specifically so she can enchant metals. I noticed I was missing the enchant dwerium spell and I wanted to skill up by making dwerium practice pendants. I decided (since the bazaar was severely lacking) to make the spells myself since they are trivial at 130 and my research is 201 or there about. Of course that first meant that I needed to make a handful of sub-components.  The full recipe list to make this one spell required me to:

• Purchase Ink Additive of the Nameless from a vendor
• Purchase Quill of the Coercer from a vendor
• Purchase Invigorating Thickener from a vendor
• Purchase Ink of Druzzil Ro from a vendor
• Craft Fine Runic Papyrus which requires Clestial cleanser (crafted), and fine runic papyrus solution (purchased)
• Celestial cleanser is a combination of celestial solvent, an empty vial, and a vial of pure water (crafted).
• A vial of pure water is an empty vial (x5), a gnomish heat source (vendor), and a water flask (x4) (vendor).

Combined all that together, eventually making my mass enchant and my single use enchant – only to find out I was unable to scribe them. I had to ask in channels what I was missing since I couldn’t figure it out. I was an enchanter. I was level 80 (the spell required 61) and every time I tried to place it into my spell book, I got a message saying my race and class couldn’t use the item. Thankfully one helpful Kandy sent me a tell. Turns out, those enchant spells are not actually spells any more, instead they are used from your main inventory as a clicky and they get turned into achievements. Not only that, but they are achievements with VERY LONG shared recast timers. Mass enchant is on an 8 hour timer for 10 bars, the single bar enchant is on a one hour timer.

Ouch.

Thankfully I could still make the practice version of the spell. I managed to level my jewelcrafting trophy almost to Master quality, I’m just 9 points away. I need more supplies to make Dwerium bars because I bought all of the raw faycite crystals last night (15k later, ouch) for 100 combines. All in all, it was a pretty productive day. I picked up House of Thule from Direct2Drive for $20 and applied it to my 2nd account. Since I was already boxing on the progression server there’s no reason why I shouldn’t continue to do so on the live servers. Except I have no characters aside from a 42 ranger on my 2nd account on Drinal – so I’m trying to decide now what to make. I’m leaning towards a beastlord for boxing / duo purposes, but a bard may be very nice too.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!