Beautiful, but Slightly Annoying
stargrace 
I’m questing through Altar of Malice right now in EQ2. It’s the expansion that took us from 95 to 100, and it’s a few behind these days so everywhere I go is pretty empty as players opt to get to 100 by experience grinding elsewhere (I can hardly blame them). My first days in Tranquil Sea were uneventful. I didn’t enjoy the quest lines and the story didn’t pick up until I got to Phantom Sea. Then it all got much more interesting.
One of my least favourite type of quests are the ones that require you to harvest something but as you’re harvesting you get a message like the one below.
That’s right, you managed to pick up the item but OH NO it crumbled to dust! Now you have to harvest another one. Honestly, these quests are nothing but annoying, especially when (as I have mentioned numerous times) RNG and I are not friends. There’s a handful of these types of quests scattered throughout the Altar of Malice timeline, and every single one made me groan. Just let me harvest double the amount instead of tossing in these failures! At least then I have some idea of progression and achievement instead of feeling bad that I’ve failed, again.
With that annoyance out of the way.. the expansion is amazing looking. It”s probably one of the prettiest places I’ve seen in EQ2. The dungeons are beautiful, and I found myself taking a lot of screenshots.
Now I continue to work my way to level 100, so I can at least have one character at the cap. Sure, I’ve got two crafters (out of 9) at 100 already, but that doesn’t really give me the same sense of achievement. Ideally I’d like to get a few more characters to 100, but we’ll see how that goes (as always). It’s nice to be playing in Norrath again, even if my subscription is up in a month. I’d like to be able to afford a krono or some other means of subscription but at 100,000 plat that’s just a bit out of my range.
Still, I’ll enjoy things in the meantime.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!