The (long) Road to 300 #EQ #EverQuest
stargrace 
One of my ‘goals’ (I love setting goals for myself in games, gives me a bit of direction) is to one day complete the Prayer Shawl 2.0 quest that came out with Underfoot. I had a blast finishing off the 1.0 Shawl (many) years ago, and when I heard about the new one of course I wanted to face that challenge. You require 300 in the ‘basics’ of crafting (this excludes things like alchemy, tinkering, and spell research) in order to receive the quest. I’ve been working my skills up (slowly) and have been quite pleased with my progress. The signature above is a few days out of date since I haven’t sync’d my character lately, but as you can see I’ve already gotten 300 in JC and baking. Added to that list I’ve raised tinkering by a fair amount (just because) and my blacksmithing and tailoring have also raised a few points each. I’m excited to finally get 300 in all my tradeskills although it will still take some time and a lot of farming. Yesterday I headed off to Acrylia Caverns in order to farm (you guessed it) acrylia for my tinkering. I was making Geerlok automated hammers.
The rest of my evening (before I eventually could no longer keep my eyes open) was spent doing missions with Ninga and Mileren (along with a boxed cleric, Elte) two monks that I spend most of my time in game with. There’s also Durf who is leveling up a zerker after being unsatisfied with his 82 shaman, and rumors that another mutual friend of ours may come back who plays a level 85 mage. It’s really nice to see so many people around although don’t get me wrong if you’re a new player returning to the ‘regular’ EQ servers you’ll be spending most of your time leveling up alone – if you’re persistent and use the public channels you WILL meet new people to play with but lower levels are a little sparse, until about 60-70 or so. That’s not to say people are not out there, they certainly are, it just takes a little while to wiggle your way into a group.
With HoT progression mostly complete (there are a few flags and keys I still want to obtain on the enchanter) my eyes are set on working through the Underfoot progression chain. I have barely even set foot into the expansion that’s already more then a year old, and I’m excited about exploring. Even if the gear is no longer valid, there’s still a lot of quests I’d like to try and who knows what I may find along the way.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself. I’ll see you in Norrath!