Nizara, VoES, and EQ1 Fun Too

This weekend has been a lot of fun so far. Deciding that Saturday would be my ‘slack’ day (and I’d actually get things done Sunday that I needed to do? Right…) I spent most of it in one game or another with a long break between the two. I started off in EQ1, and I felt like playing my druid a little bit. This of course was after I spent a few hours watching Kuron fail work on bits of his Dwarven armor for Urtog. Cultural armor is just fantastic (if not a little expensive when your skills are quite low). Anyhow. It’s not often I play my druid, I don’t even remember playing her way back when, though she does have a few leadership points, so I must have played her in a group at one point or another. Gozad was on and wanted a few levels as he’s going to be moving into a new house and won’t be around for a few days, and Kragz, a paladin friend of mine, offered to come tank and off tank our mobs while we let them die on the wonderful druid damage shield.

We headed to Blightfire Moors, zone of choice for levels 20-40 it seems, though Stone hive would have been fun, it would have also meant death with my little group. I make it a point to know limits, as a healer, and there was no way my little druid (who only has one direct heal and no regen until level 34) was healing that place. Once Gozad hit 34 (and me a little into 33) I got a plea from EQ2. Group of friends wanted to do a quick Nizara run, but had no idea if an enchanter of some sort was still required.

Nizara? Sure, I haven’t been there in ages, and never with the 79 coercer. There’s PLENTY of aa in this zone, and it’s still green at level 80. In the past, this zone was death. The mobs have an attack called Flame Claw – and you never used to be able to cure it. It’s been ‘dumbed down’ some since then, and now you can. I decided for once I would keep a charmed pet. There are stories about the bard mobs in that zone being able to take on anything and also give your group a nice buff. I couldn’t seem to find myself one of those though, so I just settled for a caster. It’s not often I actually get to play in a group with a charmed pet. In fact, I’d say it never happens. Since I knew the group though, I felt comfortable doing so. There’s always the ‘what if the pet breaks and eats a healer’ situation, which I never want to happen.

We got a few legendary chests (nothing impressive, like the belt off of the first named that I had my fingers crossed for) and a lot of aa, and had a good time. I was expecting it to take 2h still, but we flew through it. Shadowknight, Guardian, Bruiser, Templar, Dirge, and myself, Coercer. After we made quick work of Nizara, we decided to continue with the group and head to Vault of Eternal Sleep in Jarsath Wastes.

I’d also never been there with my coercer (hey, did I also mention I went to Stormhold last week and my map for Antonica was black? Oh yes, slacker coercer indeed) and decided again I’d take a pet.

Who broke about 15 minutes into the zone and dropped me to 1% health, then turned on the healer. The ex-charmed pet also summoned little pet adds, who ate and chomped until I slapped down a mez and re-charmed. Bad pet, bad!

By the end of the evening I’d walked away with 118aa (5 more then I started with) no gear upgrades but lots of stuff to transmute, two chromatic shards (which will come in handy later when I decide to craft items with them) and just had a lot of fun. It was nice to be back playing EQ2 a bit — though I’m still spending most of my time in EQ1. I can’t help it, that game just appeals to me on so many levels right now. If there was housing I’d probably be strictly playing EQ1.

The coercer is now 60% into level 79, and quickly coming up on level 80. She’s got two interesting spells ahead of her, that should help dps a lot. I’m not in a great rush to get there (did I mention last week she finished her workers hammer to port to Jarsath Wastes?) but it would be nice to start working on her epic. We’ll see how it goes.