From 8 to 13 in Crescent Reach #EQ #EverQuest
stargrace 
Crescent Reach, our home away from home once the tutorial was completed. Now, I know traditionally you would start in your race specific home cities, but this day in age you can choose between that city and Crescent Reach, which has a lot of nice beginner quests and is relatively close to POK and other amenity, so that’s where we started out. The evening began at level 8, I had just picked up my very first pet spell. I finally felt like a beastlord. We decided to explore a bit and picked up a variety of level 1 quests that are available. This is also a new thing for EQ, as most of the game was played without any quests at all, and certainly not a quest journal (you can access it via alt + q) detailing all the steps. It felt a bit weird not scribbling down directions on scraps of paper that I would quickly lose.
The quests didn’t reward much experience, but we did rack up a handful of plat which was important to me because spells are going to get pretty expensive. We also got a few odds and ends of gear, although I’m still sporting a club I found on the ground. Because we’re starting over on a new server we’ve got no coin, and being able to afford spells later on may become an issue. Oger also realized he was going to need bone chips to summon his skeleton pet, so we spent some time collecting that.
Finally it was time to burn lesson and get a few levels. We’re still working on the bears and pumas, but eventually graduated to the harder skeletons and alligators. I almost thought I was going to get a new beastlord weapon (remember, when a mob is holding a weapon you can physically see it in a lot of cases) but it ended up being a quest piece instead. Hopefully I have a bit more luck getting a weapon tomorrow.
By the end of the experience buff running out we were 13, I had a bunch of new spells, and also a handful of hero’s forge armor. This stuff is for appearance slots that EQ added not too long ago. The problem is you have to unlock the ability to wear hero’s forge armor per character, via the marketplace. I have not yet decided if I’m going to unlock it on this new character, but it’s looking like I probably will. I have a surplus of station cash at the moment, and I do like the gear. I’m just reluctant because it’s per character, and I’ve already purchased the ability to wear appearance gear on a character that I haven’t been playing.
I’m looking forward to moving out of Crescent Reach and onto a new zone. I haven’t any idea what the hotzones are these days, but I do plan on looking into it. That will probably be the next adventure, we’ll just have to see!
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.