Ah, my old nemesis from EQ1 and I can’t even call it my nemesis because I actually never managed to see Quillmane in game in all the times I attempted to. Famous for their pegasus feathered cloak which is used in the magician epic SOE has continued with the humor by spawning angry mages at the end of the EQ2 event. Yesterday I spent some time in EQ2 doing the EQ (confusing eh?) 12th anniversary quests. Mostly because I wanted the awesome house items that go along with it. I really wish EQ had put some house items in game with their anniversary tasks, but alas I’ll just have to be satisfied with augments.
The only instance I really had troubles with was Lavastorm, but I toughed it out playing a shadowknight and coercer together so that I could get the title at the end of the event. Now that I’ve gotten it, it’s simply a matter of farming the pieces I want (Guk for the level 90 gear, and Enchanted lands for the pegasus cloak which just has an incredible graphic). Each instance drops a fabled adornment, a common piece of jewelery, and the chance at the rare drop from that EQ1 encounter. You also get two tokens which can be spent at a special vendor in Antonica. Doing all of the instances once gave me enough tokens for every item that was not a plushie – plus two plushies. I’ve added them to my museum on Antonia Bayle, and I’ve started collecting items for the coercer on Oasis since at this moment I’m still split between both servers.
I also participated in my first public quest yesterday – and it reminded me of public quests in Rift and Warhammer except for one really important factor. EQ2 is not made for these sort of quests. What I mean is that there are very few spells that land on anyone outside of your group / raid and you won’t always be invited to one despite advertising. This was the case with my warden who landed (literally) on top of the PQ (public quest) in progress. I was not invited to the raid, and I couldn’t heal anyone or do anything but throw a few little nukes at the encounters. My buffs are useless for anyone not in my group and over all the experience was incredibly poor. Thus since my participation was deemed poor, my rewards were poor.
The second time around went much better. My first PQ was the Ring War (I believe that’s what it’s called on Oasis at least) and the second one was SG (not sure what that stands for). SG is the least popular of the two public quests, and I was invited to a raid without issue. Basically you battle hordes of mobs that swarm the raid and there’s an actual strategy to the encounters. We did wipe once, but revive places you right where you need to be, so it was nothing to get back into the fray. I healed for all I was worth, and managed to score a piece of legendary gear. Not that bad I suppose considering we only had one raid worth of people around.
The quests were fun but without the ability to cast heals outside of group I feel that healers really get the short end of the stick on these. I’d like to see a special flag applied while inside the blue marked map that turns your heals into AoE heals – the problem with this is that classes like shaman may see far higher returns in participation because of how their heals work. They are wards, and prevent damage from coming in. In other words a ward gets used up first before a regular heal will land. Based on the damage being done to players I doubt this would be much of an issue in a raid situation, but you never know. Hopefully we see some sort of “join public group” option in the future to make participation easier on players.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself! Woohoo for Friday!
Did you notice all the NPC magicians cursing you and crying that you stole their camp at the end of the Quillmane encounter, and the Beastlord NPC asking his ‘guild’ what the best strategy was to spawn the Ancient Cyclops, or the Gnoll Advisor trying to convince Fippy that, (perhaps), rushing headlong at a couple of level 40 guards was not the best strategy?
ROFLMAO!
@Bob – I can understand getting rewards just fine as an assassin or anyone not a healer actually, my point was that healers can’t cast their heals outside of group, so it’s hard to participate.
My assassin has actually received the best rewards when I wasn’t in the raid. However, that is probably just luck of the roll. Either that or they are somehow giving too much credit for my DPS to other characters in the raid.
@Cirop – I was there for the full event for both of them, I landed on top of the raid exactly as it started for RW, and there were more people there then the SG one, so I’m really not sure. :) I’m still convinced that casting 3 nukes over and over outside of raid vs. healing within a raid will grant you a lesser reward.
Re your PQ experience.
While I agree that EQ2 is not really set up for these as most buffs, heals, etc are group or raid based, i must point out the rewards u receive are not based on the damage u do, or the amount u heal.
The rewards are based on whether the PQ was successful or not and the difficulty of the encounter. If you defeat the x4 raid boss (easier with the RW PQ, harder on the SG PQ) you get a chance to win the best possible rewards. It then determines how much you participated in the event. If the game judges that you were there for the majority of the event and were active through out it, then you will qualify for the best reward. However this is were the RNG comes into play and the actual reward is random. If you don’t defeat the x4 boss, then the rewards available are reduced, but again your participation determines if you qualify for the best rewards and then it is random chance of getting them. Being in the raid and topping the heal/dps/buff parse does not affect your chance to win the best loot.
I think you got poor rewards for the RW PQ because you were not there long enough, not because your heals and buffs were useless outside of the raid.