I’ve said this before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again – EQ2 caters to such a large scale of players, it’s astounding. It also happens to be one of the major reasons I keep returning to the game. It offers solo content, group content, raid content, player housing, and a dedicated craft system that caters to players who may not feel like adventuring. I spent most of my time in game yesterday working on the craft portion of things. There are numerous quests for players to do if they are pure crafters (or crafters combined with adventurers) and DoV introduced some awesome crafting chains including a heritage quest for a prayer shawl. The shawl requires faction work with the Forgemasters of Thurgadin which is a daily quest that players can do. I’ve been working on it slowly.
I have 6 out of the 9 crafters at level 90, each with the earring of the solstice completed but only one has competed the crafter weapon that came from the Sentinel’s Fate crafter chain. Eventually I’d like to get them all that item. I also (along with help from a guild mate) finished off the Clockwork Rescue craft instance yesterday – there is one such instance every day of the week, and there’s a weekly solo craft mission (all given out on the Isle of Mara).
Since I was a 90 crafter with the harvester cloak completed, I finally (after much procrastination) headed off to the Isle to visit with Qho, who wanted me to harvest for him – again. I left for Odus, and after much harvesting, and then dragging the little child around Velious, and then buying him a 6 plat souvenir (expensive!) I was the proud owner of my first pack horse. This horse works like a guild gatherer, you set it to collect supplies for a particular tier and two hours later you collect those supplies from it. I’m eager to begin tinkering on a few of my characters (what can I say, I’m a bit crazy) and I’ve got my pack horse out collecting supplies for T1 at the moment, since it’s always hard for me to find loam.
I didn’t kill a single thing, and it was a great way for me to earn achievements for quest completions, and I earned a lot of coin, some great house items, and a few recipe books. I got to explore the Fortress of Drunder which is impressive – and also picked up some heirloom recipe books while I was there. Thankfully the crafting instance dropped a Ry’Gorr pattern book for me, and I’m just missing one more.
The only other game I’ve played that matches EQ2 in their dedication to crafters (that was also an adventure game, not simple a crafting game like a Tale in the Desert) is Vanguard, which has a complex crafting system and some amazing quests in game. I think that games that recognize the desire for these sort of things are wonderful, the homeshow channel (/join antonia_bayle.homeshow) is always bustling with people talking about their decorating endevours, the craft channel always full of questions, comments, and laughter. They remind me why I love these games so much.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
Stargrace, your posts on crafting and housing made me nostalgic for EQ2. I just started up in the game again (and it’s an unfortunate time, as in a week I’m going to have family over as house guests for two months — very limited playtime!), this time on AB. I don’t remember how to do anything, but it’s fun trying to figure stuff out.
A while back I created a new character on a server I’d never been to before so I had no friends on it. I wanted to see how self-sufficient I could be. I also wanted to take my time and not worry about leveling quickly, but try to explore places I’d not seen on other alts and stuff like that. I also decided I’d focus on crafting with this toon. I had other crafters, but with the level increase from 80 to 90 with Sentinel’s Fate, I hadn’t bothered to craft beyond that on my 1 crafter that actually was 80, and I’d never even bothered to get the Earring of the Solstice for that toon either.
So anyway. . . this “solo” character is now in its mid-50’s as an adventurer, and is a 90 sage (with Earring), 450 Transmuter, and 450 Tinkerer to boot. tinkering is surprisingly quick to level — I’d guess I got from 0 to 450 in less than 6 hours all told — but with the caveat that this assumes you have a nice full crafting depot in your guild’s hall that they don’t expect you to necessarily keep restocking. So long as you have mats it’s fast, but without a ready supply, it takes much longer.
I admit, it’s very fun to have a wizard that can Feign Death and has a 50% chance of being able to rez the priest that forgot to give out feathers when the group started. Crafting has definitely been very rewarding to work through on this character.
When I eventually get back to EQ2, I plan on getting him his flying mount via crafting ASAP. Sounds like way too much fun to miss out on.