The EverQuest Team and Sony Online Entertainment would like to express our support and condolences for those affected by the recent tragedies in Japan. The cherry trees that have appeared in the Plane of Knowledge and Neighborhood zones are a symbol of our hope for a quick recovery.
The new group task added yesterday takes place in a unique version of The Mechamatic Guardian, a zone that I just don’t like. Me and Ninga managed to complete the first portion of the zone with our mercenary (I have a J5 tank, he a J5 healer) and then Xaoz joined us on his shaman and monk for the final fight against the CPU. You basically have to hack into a computer using codes, and then play through a very long final event to defeat the CPU.
Your very first task after zoning in is to defeat Mechano Steam Sentinels, Sentries, and Warders, which are mobs found on the upper floors. Then you’ve got to pour bleach into the oil reserves bay. This bay is straight on the main floor, in a room to the right hand side. The problem is that it’s also covered with see invis oil blobs that you’ve got to defeat. Once that is completed you need to speak with Gearbie, and then defeat the CPU’s creator – Sork Hibbleton. You steal a book of codes from him and are required to enter these codes into the CPU. Only one code is the correct one, for my group (I am unsure if this is random or not) the code was 123456. Not exactly difficult to crack that’s for sure. When you speak the wrong code four adds spawn, so if you can get someone who can feign or at least stand in the hallway across from the CPU that is the best bet.
Finally you’ve got to defeat the CPU itself. This is where we had trouble. See four times during the fight he spawns four adds. We had no crowd control class so what we had to do was be on the watch for adds and then back off and feign (while the shaman used their totem to escape combat) and then monk pull the four adds. Then we would resume our attack on the CPU which would have regenerated to full while we were dealing with the adds. The adds have a small knock back, and the CPU has an AOE slow that’s annoying if you’re a melee. The best bet in an ideal situation if you have no crowd control would be to range fight the CPU from the hallway, and pacify pull the adds each time they spawn, ignoring the CPU at that time.
The fight was difficult with our make up but I loved completing it. The rewards were nice – except for the small fact that they have no augment slots. At least not the 85-89 versions I’m unsure as to whether or not the level 90 version of the zone is different. I wasn’t able to request that one because I wasn’t level 90 at the time. I claimed an item that has enhance minion 8 on it, as opposed to my previous earring with enhance minion 6. Pretty excited, it’s always a good thing to be able to summon stronger pets. There are numerous rewards with a few different clickies, so if you’re looking for a challenge to do with friends, this is a great one.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself. I’ll see you in Norrath!
Not only was everyone in game celebrating the 12th birthday of EverQuest yesterday but thanks to a few tasks I also managed to get my first ever level capped character – of course it did take me 12 years, but it’s better late then never, right? My necromancer came close to hitting the cap of 85 last expansion but never quite made it there before I moved on to other games. This year I was determined to hit 90 no matter what – and I’m incredibly pleased that I did. Now that I’m 90 there’s so much more to work on, especially aa. A lot of people have 2500+ and I’m just brushing up to 300. There’s the bard on my 2nd account that I’d like to level up, and lets not forget all of the crafting I have yet to do, as well as exploring more old world content and doing activities in expansions I’ve missed almost completely like Underfoot.
This year there is a new solo quest, a group quest, and a new raid. I’ve been working on the solo quest and completed the group quest which I’ll write about in a separate post. I’m not sure if I’ll manage to get a chance to do the raid but if I see anyone recruiting for it I’ll attempt to join.
The solo quest takes place within the new housing zone of Sunrise Hills. There’s a collector in a bright red robe that you can barely miss, musing over lost shards spread throughout the zone. He gives you a task to collect them all, tiny little semi rare shards on the ground. They glow a bright neon green so once you spot one they’re hard to miss but the quest will take a few hours to do. Thankfully you can 1. purchase pieces from other players if you know what you’re looking for and 2. trade between players for missing pieces. You’ll end up with a handful of doubles since the spawning items are rare and not lore, and there are a good number of them to collect. After working on this quest for two hours I had five of the pieces down and another 9 to go I believe. Hopefully I’ll manage to collect the rest once the game comes back up later today.
Fabled are also back in game but this year there’s no motivation for me to take part in the event as none of the items would be an upgrade. Fabled encounters stop with the Planar Power expansion with no additions coming in the foreseeable future, and while I’m happy that I won’t have to deal with the very long painful camps (I did two years ago) I sort of miss the excitement of this portion of the anniversary.
Do you plan on playing with any of the anniversary fun? Hard to believe that EverQuest is already 12 years old and still going strong! Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself, I’ll see you in Norrath!
This will more than likely be the last time I see Saryrn until after the fabled event passes, since pretty much all of the Norrathian Gods are heavily camped during that time for their drops. Yesterday started the first of two double experience events and I happily redeemed all of my task rewards that I had saved up. The experience was enough to secure level 88 and Ninga managed to hit 90. We’ve put out another call looking for a guild, and have had a few replies so far. The previous one we had joined simply wasn’t a good match and while I would like to raid and have some fun I’m not about to join a random guild that sends me a tell.
The Saryrn fight went down easy, Sorrow spawned closer to the end then I remember, but the rest of the murder (ie: swarm of crows) were there as annoying as ever. The best part is that at 88 Saryrn was still green to me, I’m not sure if that will be the case at 90. I looted a bunch of parchment and turned that in for some spells to sell, it was mostly just the Nostalgia I was after.
I’ve slowly been leveling up the bard on the 2nd account. She managed to go from level 21 to 34 yesterday in my favorite lowbie area – The Overthere. It’s not a hot zone, but with bonus experience (and quicker leveling over all) implemented I sure didn’t notice. Now of course I have to pick up all of the song she’s missed I’m looking forward to leveling her up to the same range as my druid and then boxing the two together. I’m also excited to see what other anniversary quests get implemented in EQ this week. It should be good times.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself, I’ll see you in Norrath!
Even though the official start of the 12 year anniversary events is tomorrow – today marks the beginning of two double experience events. The first one runs from the 14th-16th and the second one runs from 25th-27th. Think there’s no way to prepare for these events? You would be quite wrong. See in EverQuest there are things called “tasks” or “missions” in the later expansions, especially in the House of Thule expansion. These are instanced versions of dungeons with specific objectives that players have to accomplish for a reward of experience, coin, faction, and typically one of the new types of currency like dream motes in the case of HoT. You can do these tasks one of two ways. A group member will request the task and if you’re in group you will automatically be added to it and have the ability to hail the npc that will port you into the instance – or – you can get a “task add” also called a TA in public channels. This will add you to the current mission but NOT add you to the group. That means you can be doing your own thing in the bazaar or any other zone, and still get the rewards from being task added to a mission. If you happen to box or have a group of friends who are not interested in the progression flags or rewards from doing these tasks it’s very common to see players selling TA’s for anywhere from 10,000-100,000 plat depending on the task. Since these tasks are also used in HoT progression, people can sell access to further zones (ie: in order to unlock Tier 4 of HoT you need to do a number of tasks).
Preparing for double experience comes from the fact that you can actually save up the rewards from up to 10 tasks before claiming any one of them. All you have to do is close the reward window and ignore it until you’re ready to claim. That meant yesterday players were frantically doing tasks in order to save up the rewards for today, and me and my friends were no different. I did six tasks with the desire to claim them today once the bonus has been turned on, and before I actually remembered to start saving my tasks I managed to cling to level 87 on the necromancer. This opens up a few more powerful dots as well as another tank pet. It looks like I’ll be 90 before too long, then I can work on working those aa and leveling the bard on my 2nd account who has been sorely neglected in my climb to 90. There’s a chance that another friend of mine may be returning to Drinal which I’m pretty excited to hear about. The server is quite populated, about 500 people in public channels at any one time, and I’m never going to think it’s a bad thing when someone returns.
I’m excited for the remainder of the anniversary events to get off the ground. Two years ago there were some fantastic quests for potions and I heard from others there were some anniversary augments – as well as the fabled events of course. I believe there’s an increase in spawn rates for the next three days as well (named, that is) but we’ll just have to see. Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself! I’ll see you in Norrath.
stargrace