This week I created a new character over on the Maj’dul server, and joined a small group of friends who are going through some older content. I decided to go with a Halfling coercer – sometime between when I played last in 2016 and now, they moved enchanters over to the ‘neutral’ category so that you could be either illusionist or coercer with any race available. In the past, coercers were limited to evil races. Illusionists were limited to good races. I love coercers. It’s my favourite class. I also love halflings, they’re my favourite race. It made sense that I went with this combination.

I made it to level 30 pretty easily and that’s where I turned all of my adventure experience to AA so that I could stay at this level for a while. I also decided to go down the jewel craft line for crafting, and I made it to level 55. That lets me get some mount quests out of the way and unlocks some things that would be unavailable unless I raised my adventure level.

Next was to find a home. I’m using my second account for this character, so I don’t have a lot of the bells and whistles that my main account has. I did have a few veteran bonuses to claim, and after touring through a number of different prestige homes, I settled on the Isle of Refuge.

I plan on creating a farm / garden type home for my halfling coercer, and refurbishing the basement that comes in the mage tower into some sort of bedroom. These days there are tons of building blocks and other items you can use to completely build your dream home from scratch, and I’d like mine to be halfling sized. There’s also an editor you can use to make sure your items get placed exactly how you’d like them, flipping and rotating them and all that good stuff. The homeshow channel (/join antonia_ bayle.homeshow) is as active as ever, with competitions and events being posted on the forums, and once again I’m reminded of how hands-on this community is (and how much I love it). For now, there’s very little in the home, but I’m sure that will change with time.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

What have I been up to since I’ve returned to game? Well, to start it off I do have three active accounts – these were the same accounts I had active on EQ1, since station access grants all access across games, I just continued playing them. I’m used to the alt-tab method of boxing, and since EQ2 has a spell queue system, it’s pretty simple. I spent a little time deciding what I wanted my group to be and settled on my coercer/carpenter, fury/sage, berzerker/woodworker for the main group – along with two mercenary. That leaves me with room to invite others to play, or to use the mercenary depending on whether or not I can find a group. Next came leveling. The berzerker and the fury are already 120, but the coercer is(was) sitting at level 100 from when I played last and was leveling in Skyshrine. I’m not sure where to level these days, most people say that questing through PoM is the way to go, and then you can get from 110-120 in about three hours of pre-blood of luclin questing. I’m not quite at that point yet, but I did take the coercer to the Plane of Magic to quest, and she’s sitting at level 105.

Next was to work on their crafting. I’ve been trying to get them all to at least 100 crafter, and then working on the tradeskill quests to raise them further. Right now the sage just hit level 51, and the woodworker and carpenter were already at 100 from last time I played. I have them training their mounts, training their mercenary, training familiars, participating in Overseer – and that’s pretty much where I’m at so far. I’ve been doing two solo dungeons in RoS (current content) but I haven’t continued the timeline yet because I want that coercer to be able to quest as well, and for now she’s too small.

When the summer event starts next week (the 10th is the reported date) I’ll have three more 120 boosts (one per account) and I plan on using them to boost up some alts, not only for the 20% bonus they provide for having max level characters, but also to give me some options if I don’t feel like using the static group. I’ve also been participating in the Festivals that are ongoing, the Tinkerers Fest ends tonight at 1am and the Kelethin city festival is going on right now. With all of the writs I’ve been doing I have a lot of city tokens to be able to spend. Speaking of which, the guild is inching its way towards 95 in which case I MIGHT actually upgrade the guild hall to a T4 hall instead of a T3 one (I can’t actually remember if it’s 95 for this or 100). I know it’s just me actively playing right now, but my guild is compromised of a few real life friends who haven’t played since 2016 and I find the status and plat requirements fairly simple these days.

In any case, that’s where I’m at and what I’m up to! As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Before anyone asks, yes, there are still updates to EQ2 – so what’s coming up? The producer’s letter goes into details on what we can expect this summer, including an update that is releasing August 10th, just around the corner. They are also going to be running a sort of ‘welcome back’ promotion, where if you’ve got an all access account you can obtain a 120 character boost. I do NOT suggest this for anyone actually returning to the game, but at least grab it and use it for an alt (which is exactly what I plan on doing). There will be bonus satchels if you’re questing in Reign of Shadows (the latest expansion) and are also an all access member, and they include things like currency.

There used to be an event called Days of Summer – which is being renamed this year to Panda, Panda, Panda! I’ve actually never participated in this before, so I’m looking forward to checking it out and seeing what everyone else is talking about when they mention it. Apparently it involves lots of .. everything. Catching your characters up, housing, that sort of stuff.

At the end of the letter there was also some sort of centaur hint, but we’ll just have to see what that is all about! I’m not sure that ‘excited’ is the right word to use, but I am certainly looking forward to seeing these events first hand. It feels comfortable to be playing, and I like that.

I’ve been back playing EQ2 for a few days now, and I’m starting to settle into a bit of a rhythm (finally). I’ve been able to complete two solo dungeons from the latest expansion, upgraded a few pieces of gear, did some crafting, and even worked on some of the timelines to the expansions I skipped (unintentionally, I should not have used the 120 boost I got from buying the latest expansion, so I wanted to go back and complete what I had missed).

The game is pretty quiet compared to 5 years ago when I played last – but there are definitely people around, and they have a lot of passion for the game. Chat is not overwhelming, but it is active. There’s people around in most of the zones I head off to, and while I haven’t quite hit the pace I used to have, I’m getting there. I’m comfortable enough with things that I’m going to stick with it for a while and see how it goes. There’s still so much more I want to do, including working on housing – oh, and alts. I have so many alts that need some attention!

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

After many failed dungeon attempts yesterday, I started reading the forums (and you’ll see this echoed in comments from yesterday’s post too) to try to figure out where I was going wrong. Surely there must be something very basic that I was missing to create such a cluster of fail. Turns out, I was. I stumbled across this post that talked about the exact encounter I was having problems with, and it wasn’t just me.

Returning players can’t just take their 120 boosted and call it a day. No, you have to make sure that you reach a potency and a fervor, and a HP, and other thresholds. You need to go do what is commonly called ‘panda quests’ for augments, you need to get the gear out of the crate that is in the starter zone to the latest expansion (and the one prior) and then take the augments out of that gear, and use it in yours.

It was also suggested that I work on crafters first so I could help my characters out – fantastic suggestion, because I only have adept rank spells right now, and I want at LEAST expert. Those cost 10,000 platinum each which is pretty cheap compared to the inflation of today, but well out of my price range. Crafting those spells/skills will be a much better option.

That being said, things DID get better as I learned the ‘new’ way of playing. I did manage to do two Echo Caverns solo adventures, got some upgrades, even dinged my guild level 92! I had a really great time, and I slowly, ever so slowly, started remembering WHY I played EQ2 for so many years. I obtained a few more familiar, I did all of my Overseer quests for the day, and after three days of trying, felt like “hey, maybe I could stick with this for a bit”.

Honestly? It was lovely. I’m looking forward to things a little bit more now.