|
Bettik posted:Wow, I never knew there was a snare clicky! That'll definitely be critically useful later. Apologies if you mentioned it already, but is this a base game quest or a later addition? I remember doing my Vah Shir bard instrument quests as a newbie and enjoying them a great deal (still have those instruments in my bank somewhere). Also did the Lambent armour quest line at the time, and all the epics. Still, for a game named EverQuest, there's actually not that much questing in the day to day playing of it. Yeah, people talk about WoW as just copying Everquest or whatever but although you can absolutely tell its roots in Everquest (and to a lesser extent other classic MMOs) the move to a questing-primary approach to levelling was a big shift. For me, it was a huge improvement, but even if you prefer Everquest's model I think it's hard to argue that it's not a pretty fundamental shift in design. (Also given quests used to have that completely obtuse dialogue system with no hints, it was probably just as well they weren't the focus. Can you imagine?)
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2022 15:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 08:26 |
|
|
I forget if it was mentioned in this thread already but one of the other things in original EQ that was both terrible and secretly great was that you were not allowed to tab out. If you were playing you were playing dagnabbit! There was no tabbing out to read a website that tells you every quest step. You needed to ask people what to do, where to go, and if they could help. Stuff like that reinforced the need to communicate in a real way with other players that just doesn’t exist anymore.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2022 16:19
|
|
|
The next update is going to feature Takish-Hiz a bit. You'll see why it's awful just beyond the obvious.
|
|
#
?
Jul 25, 2022 21:33
|
|
|
 Starting off today's update, by level 35 we've achieved over 220 points in Rujarkian Hills, allowing us to lay claim to an augment I've been gunning for since the start of these characters:  This will add a Recommended level of 50 to any weapon we slot it in, but it procs from level 1, meaning we get to start doing 75 extra damage. And it has a proc modifier on it that makes it proc a lot; this will up Kella's personal DPS by a bit.  As you can see, our Naraithus now has a Recommended Level of 50 instead of 45; it'll still eclipse the Fighting Gauntlets pretty quickly, though.   Are you two sure we need to do this? Yes. They hold a spell we will require. I'm not looking forward to it by any means, but yeah. If you're certain. I'll speak to the gnome and get our adventure. Once more into the toilet, I suppose. We'll be fine. We're much stronger than we were the first time we attempted the palace of the Takishians. I hope you're right.I'm doing Collections because they're faster than the other options at this time. gently caress Takish-Hiz.  Inside, things don't go any easier, but now our Enchanter has enough mana and, thanks to Clarity's +4/tick gained at level 29, mana regen to Enthrall things and keep them locked down pretty much indefinitely. You pretty much won't see me use many mezzes outside of Enthrall until we're well past the mid-50s; all pre-Kunark mezzes function on enemies up to level 55, Enthrall has the lowest refresh timer out of the ones above it so it can be chain cast, and a shorter cast timer than the others. Enthrall is great, and its low mana cost means its 48 second duration isn't as big a deal as it could be. In situations needing more than 3 mobs to be locked down at a time, though, things can get dicey.   Annnnd here's where things start going wrong. Sweepers are Enchanters. You might not be focusing on the buff/debuff window on the upper right. Let me show you it:   Kella gets mezzed, but it's only for 24 seconds; when Kedrustorii gets mezzed, the sweeper uses Entrance, the level 34 mez with a 72 second duration. And she was just about to heal Kella. Things I didn't get screenshots of because I was panicking and trying to salvage things: the sweeper also charmed Gyyi, which broke her charm pet, which means Kella has the former charm pet, Gyyi, and an extra beating on her. This is a wipeout.  Here we see Kedrustorii casting rezzes; at level 35 we can get 50% of our death loss back, but it comes with a price:  Resurrection Effects is a 5 minute debuff applied to you when you get rezzed. It absolutely tanks all your stats to 1, which slowly recover over the duration of the debuff. You also lose any buffs you have, any pets you have summoned or charmed (who will then beeline for you to kick your freshly-rezzed rear end - ask me how I know!), and you wind up with 20% of your base health and 0 mana, both of which recover normally even with the debuff on. If you're carrying a lot of things, having 1 STR can leave you rooted in place for the duration, or most of it, due to encumbrance; having more weight than your weight limit applies a progressive movement speed debuff until you can't move at all.  After recovering from our wipe, we continue on.  I like this room.  Here we find the real issue with Beastlords, while I'm getting new pet toys for Sascha in between dungeons. It's not that they're partially Monk, partially Shaman, get access to spells slowly; it's that, until AAs come into play, 75-90% of their power lies in their pets. They still follow the leveling structure of hybrids, which means they get pets at 9, 15, 22, 30, 39, and 49 - and here we see that not even 5 levels after getting it, Sascha is already a green con to Kella. In fact, the level 30 pet spell, Spirit of Herikol, summons a pet that is level 26. Remember what I said about skills and level playing a factor in what kind of damage you can do to enemies? Yeah. Level also applies resist modifiers, meaning that Sascha's proc buffs will get partially or fully resisted by higher level enemies. Having such a low-level pet in comparison to enemies we're fighting - remember, LDoNs scale to your party's average level - means that our kill speed is dropping in between pet upgrades. This becomes less of an issue in the post-50 world; Beastlords get 4 pet spells in Kunark, at 54 (level 41 pet), 56 (level 43 pet), 58 (level 45 pet), and 60 (level 47 pet). They'll pretty much always be around light blue in the 50s, but that's better than them being green cons. Post-60, things change quite a bit; all pets got changed for Planes of Power, gaining a minimum level of 60 with varying degrees of effectiveness, and continue gaining better and stronger pet procs the whole way. We just have to suffer for now.  In another Takish, of which I am running five, we find a named with a nice piece of loot; that glowing red orb thing usually indicates either a monk weapon or a caster/priest primary/secondary.  This time, it was a primary, which promptly replaces Kedrustorii's Club*. Fare thee well, Club*, you clubbed quite enough halflings to death.   Takish-Hiz has a lot of lore pop-ups associated with it. This room is a nice, circular room with a staircase going around it - a staircase you can't fall off due to invisible walls.   The staircases have landings, usually which there's a small room full of mobs. This is nice, the distances are far enough that we're in no danger of aggroing multiple rooms. gently caress Takish-Hiz, though.  We also encounter the final landing. Can't wait to see what's in the room!  It's empty. Welp. Time to find more mobs.  A little later I go scouring Shadow Haven for a few Luclin-specific spells and run across this lad. Polson Medicinal. He sells Alchemy supplies. Do ya get it?  Just Takish-Hiz things.  We find another Intimidating Sand Burrower in another dungeon. With the exact same drop. Oh well.   At 39, we get an upgrade to Gyyi's Charm, Cajoling Whispers. As you can see, it charms up to level 46, and I've already encountered a few mobs too high to be charmed by Beguiling Whispers, which goes up to 37. Welcome, but that cast time is disgusting and mobs are starting to hit for triple digits. I'm going to have to start using Mesmerize to control them to give me time to recharm without dying. At 44, this will become Color Skew (8 second stun), Mesmerize, Tash, Recharm. Remember that order; it's an Enchanter's best friend. I'd be doing it now, but nobody was selling the Enchanter 20 stun spell, which is research-only, so I have to wait for 44 and its purchasable upgrade.  Kella also gets a nice upgrade at 39. I haven't been keeping up on her Conjuration skill; I'll have to fix that later so she can cast this without a ton of fizzles.  As you can see, the Beastlord pet heals also keep rough pace with Cleric heals, but cost far less. This is on par with Superior Healing; Kella also gets Healing (100hp, remember) at this level.  I meant to show this off at level 30. Here's Kella, and how she looks compared to her pet; Sascha got another size upgrade at 39, she's BIG now.  And then Kella applies the Shrink spell. Shrink is a godsend in dungeons, especially if you play a larger race. Shrink reduces your character model by 35% - and it can be cast twice on Large races. Vah Shir technically count as Large, so...  Here it is applied twice. I can cast it once each on Kedrustorii and Gyyi if needed, but their character models are small enough that it's not really necessary in most dungeons. I still like the closer-to-the-ground view; when we start doing things other than LDoNs, expect to see the characters shrunk at all times.   And here we find a lovely augmentation. 21% haste is only 1% less than Kella's gloves, but Kella's gloves have awful, awful stats; I can finally upgrade them to something with a decent AC, later, and use this augment instead.  In our fifth Takish-Hiz we find this room. This room can contain a boss, but it didn't this time. I do like the fact that LDoNs, random dungeons that they were, didn't just shove a bunch of different similar looking rooms together - sure, that's pretty much the majority, but every so often they threw in nice-looking setpieces like this.  And this is our reward for 150 Takish-Hiz points; Blessing of Temperance, a much needed spell. Okay, let's break down Cleric buffs. Clerics get an HP/AC buff (the Courage line), a pure AC buff (the Holy Armor line), and a pure HP buff that costs a reagent (the Symbol line). Come Kunark, however, at level 60, they got a spell called Aegolism - and you'll find a fairly even split on EQ players who pronounce it Eejolism and Aygolism. Aegolism, and its group version, Blessing of Aegolism, are a combination of all three spells, giving very comparable HP/AC to the three buffs individually. Aegolism gives 1100hp, 180 AC, while the three best buffs gave (Symbol of Marzin (700hp, 1h3m duration), Heroism (425hp, 65AC, 1h12m duration) and Bulwark of Faith (125AC, 1h21m duration) a combined total of 1125hp and 190AC, but had much shorter durations. Aegolism cost the same reagent as Symbol of Marzin (1 Peridot, ~10-12 platinum gem) but lasted twice the time. Its group version, Blessing of Aegolism, cost 4 peridots. But then Luclin came around and introduced "Ancient" spells, and Ancient: Gift of Aegolism, still costing 4 Peridots for being a group spell, increased HP by 1300 and AC by 230. Ancient spells drop off high-end raid mobs, though, so if we see one it'll be because I've decided to raid on this server. Anyways, Clerics continued to get Symbol spells at higher levels because they could be combined with the higher level Druid HP/AC buffs, which also added on Mana regeneration, and you could get usually even higher HP combining a Druid buff with a Cleric Symbol. Aegolism got an upgrade in Planes of Power called Virtue, with the group version Hand of Virtue. This is all to say that when Legacy of Ykesha came around, they backported the idea to lower level Cleric spells. At level 44, Clerics can quest for a spell called Temperance - which I will show off, along with the Beastlord LoY spells - which is a Peridot-costing lower level version of Aegolism, at 800hp and 160 AC. In LDoN, they added Blessing of Temperance, which is just a group version of Temperance. I'll probably stick to single-casting, unless Blessing of Temperance also only costs 1 Peridot - I don't remember if it doesn't - because it'll be cheaper that way, monetarily.  I also pick up a new tunic for Kella; that 9 AC tunic she's been wearing for ages is not doing a good job anymore. This one caps out at 17 by level 45, plus all the stats she cares about. It's a good upgrade. I am drained after that experience. As am I. Yeah... I think I went down like, six times during all of that? I lost count after the third. What say we take a break? I know it's a bit early, but... I am in TOTAL agreement. Let us never venture back into this place. Well, we kinda will have to, there's an augment I'm going to need... Then that's a problem for future us, isn't it?A level 65 augmentation that provides a pet focus - which I'll go into later - requires 760 points from Takish-Hiz. We're not grinding out 700+ points when we're only getting 36. We can do that after we hit level 55, and we've grinded for some AAs that'll make Kella even better. Next time: Level 44, and two very important quests - Temperance and Tashania. As an aside, here are a few things that happened that I didn't manage to get screenshots of: all the times Kella got Feared, which made her run away and out of my control, twice which had her run into a room still full of mobs and aggro them; once I got it under control, and once I didn't. The few times Kella got charmed, which despawned her pet, meaning I lost pet toys, and I had to mez her with Gyyi to keep her from beating on Gyyi and Kedrustorii while Gyyi's charm pet was left alone against the mobs. ALL THE BLIND SPELLS CAST ON US WHICH BLACKS OUT YOUR SCREEN AND MAKES IT SO YOU CAN'T SEE ANYTHING. Yes, in EverQuest, blind spells rob you, the PLAYER, of their sight. Immersive, no? RelentlessImp fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Jul 26, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2022 01:48
|
|
|
Today we're going to talk about Pet Focus items. Pet focus items have been in the game since the original launch. The original one, the Encyclopedia Necrotheurgia, was a Necromancer-only item that only worked for their level 49 pet spell that dropped from Innoruuk himself in the Plane of Hate, and the Staves of Elemental Mastery that focused Magician pets of their corresponding elements - two of which dropped in Plane of Hate from Minis (Earth, Fire), one of which came from Kedge Keep off of Phinigel Autropos (Water), and one of which had to be quested for in the Plane of Sky (Air). When the Temple of Solusek Ro was added six months into the game's timeline, a series of Magician foci were added that you had to quest for but could be obtained easily in your mid-30s. Later, when Beastlords were added to the game, a singular Pet Focus item was added for them - but was also usable by Necromancers and Mages, the Gloves of Dark Summoning from Vex Thal, Luclin's endgame raid dungeon. In Planes of Power, a singular item was added again, and again for all three classes, a ranged item called the Symbol of Ancient Summoning. And then in LDoN, two augments were added - the Diamond Prism of Companionship and the Cherished Companion Shard, one obtainable via 760 points in Takish-Hiz, and the other a drop from an LDoN raid. After that, pet foci became much more widespread; Gates of Discord alone has 6 of them, one of which is superior to the other 5. And that progression continued into the future; an easily-obtainable one, generally barely increasing the power of the pet, and one to two for each class - one groupable, one raid - and then 1-2 items in between those two. But what do pet foci do? Well, when you equip them and summon a pet, that pet's power is increased by a percentage. This generally means a level bump of a couple of levels, an increase in minimum and maximum damage, a boost of stats - and affecting some behind-the-scenes stuff, like the "default equipment" that is equipped into a pet's slots at higher levels that also boosts their power as a workaround to make them more powerful instead of just directly changing the spells and pets themselves. The very basic ones, like the Magician questable ones, are a 5% increase; the Planar drops are a 10% increase; the Gloves of Dark Summoning are a 20% increase; the Symbol of Ancient Summoning is a 25% increase; the Diamond Prism of Companionship is a 15% increase, and the Cherished Companion Shard is a 30% increase. All focus items have a "Rank" system, and each Rank is an effective 5% increase. But not all focus effects are created equal, even taking into account this disparity; focus items only work on spells up to a certain level. The base Mage ones are level 1-49 spells, the Planar drops and Encyclopedia Necrotherugia are 49-60 spells, the Gloves of Dark Summoning 56-75, the Symbol of Ancient Summoning 61-75, the Diamond Prism 59-70, and the Cherished Companion Shard 61-85. Which is why I'm not too bothered about getting the Diamond Prism just yet; for Kella, it'll only work for her level 60+ pet spells, so we have plenty of time. Pet focus items are very, very good, even the base 5% ones. They massively increase a pet's ability to do damage and take damage, not just because of the level increase but also the direct modifiers to their stats. Every pet class needs to have one as soon as it's feasible to do so. It's simply a passive power increase, and you never turn those down.
|
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2022 02:10
|
|
|
Wayfarer's Haven discovered an RMT Trader and turned on double experience in celebration of banning them. This made it so I wound up at level 45, which means I just need to do the Temperance quest, which might take a minute; I remember the drop rate being absolutely loving awful. But here is a lovely article that can detail the spawning of RMT out of EverQuest far better than I ever could.
RelentlessImp fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Jul 26, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2022 23:12
|
|
|
Let's talk about EverQuest's spell system. Only four classes in EverQuest don't get access to some form of spellcasting; the Warrior, Rogue, Berserker, and Monk. The other 12 classes are Hybrids, Casters, or Priests, in EverQuest's parlance. Casters include the Wizard, Enchanter, Necromancer, and Magician. The Priests are Cleric, Druid and Shaman. The Hybrids are Ranger, Shadow Knight, Paladin, Beastlord, and Bard. Every spell in the game comes in the form of a Scroll, which is either purchased from a merchant, or as of Ruins of Kunark onwards, found as a drop from slain enemies. The vast majority of spells at 51-60 are dropped only, at least until the Plane of Knowledge gets its spell merchant upgrade (and later expansions go so far as to have you collect points through tasks of some kind to purchase your spells through LDoN-esque merchants), creating a lucrative market among players for high-value spells such as Call of the Hero, Koadic's Endless Intellect, Aegolism, and so on. Come Planes of Power, and for several expansions afterwards, Scrolls moved to a quest system, in which you found an expansion-wide drop and turned it in to an NPC involved in that expansion to get a random spell reward. In Planes of Power, this was in 3 tiers; one such item for 61 & 62 spells, another for 63 & 64, and a final one for level 65. Gates of Discord and Omens of War refined it further, to one such item drop per spell level, to cut down on the randomness, as some classes had huge spell pools - such as the Magician and having their entire line of spell foci focused on that expansion's level range being entirely within the first or second level of spells for that expansion. Scrolls are then scribed into the caster's spellbook - accessible by clicking the button on the bottom of your spell bar or pressing CTRL+B (originally ALT+B). This opens up a book with originally 50 pages, later expanded to 90. You scribe a scroll by picking it up and clicking on one of the empty spaces in your spellbook, and wait for it to be scribed. At low levels, this can take some time - and in classic, was entirely dependent on the spell level, meaning some high-level spells could take ages to scribe, again simulating BECMI and AD&D and how wizard spellbooks worked in tabletop games then. Pretty quickly, though, scribing times were vastly reduced, and now it takes hardly any time at all to scribe a scroll. Clicking on a scribed scroll produces a spell gem on your cursor, which you can then click into one of your empty spell gems, or press ALT+ the number of the spell gem to memorize it. This is another timed process, reduced a lot by how many levels you have over that spell, but primarily by the Meditate skill. You have 8 spell gems in EverQuest. You can only have 8 spells memorized at a time, and you can only cast a memorized spell. It took until Omens of War for them to increase this number, via an AA ability - giving you a 9th slot. These days, there are five levels of Mnemonic Retention, allowing you to memorize up to 13 spells at a time by level 105. This means there is usually quite a lot of spell switching in and out during a play session; let's use my Enchanter for an example. Her usual spell line-up is Tash, Slow, 2 Mezzes, a Color Stun, Charm, a free-floating slot for buffs, and Theft of Thought after 51. Her seventh spell gem changes pretty much every little bit, depending on what I need at the time, usually filled with a buff I need to recast frequently, swapped out for rebuffing long-term buffs when the time comes. There are several kinds of spells in EverQuest, depending on the class. Here's a quick run-down of the types of spells found in EverQuest. Direct Damage spells, colloquially known as DDs or nukes, are spells that deal their damage immediately upon the end of casting. Direct Damage spells come in the following flavors: The traditional nuke, Area Effect, Point-Blank Area Effect, and Rains. -Area Effect nukes are nukes that take a target, and damage up to four enemies around the target. These are primarily Wizard and Druid spells. -Point-Blank Area Effect nukes can be cast without a target, and affect an unlimited number of enemies around the caster. A PBAE of any kind has an unlimited number of targets. -Rains are spells that deal 3 waves of damage to the targeted enemy and up to 2 other enemies (2 waves for 4 or more). Damage-over-Time spells, or DoTs or dots, are spells that do their damage over a period of time; how long a time depends on the spell itself. Necromancers and Shamans have the most of these. Heals are exactly what they sound like on the tin, they restore the HP of targets. Heals come in Single-Target, Heal-Over-Time, and Group flavors. -Quick Heals were introduced in Ruins of Kunark; they have above-average mana costs, but short cast times for those times when you need a heal NOW, usually to give yourself breathing room for a traditional heal. Buffs are spells that give a beneficial effect to other players or their pets. These come in several flavors, affecting HP, AC, all the statistics, your Attack rating, your attack speed, resistances, casting speed, or even applying proc effects to your melee attacks. Buffs come in three types: -Single-Target Buffs are the traditional buff - target a player, cast it. Pet buffs fall under this category, as well. -Self-Only Buffs are buffs that can only affect yourself; there's a wide variety of these, from the Mage shielding line to the Cleric's mana regeneration/HP/AC buff to Rangers' line of attack buffs. -Group Buffs are buffs that affect entire groups at once, and only start appearing in Kunark-era spells and later once Verant realized buffing groups took way too much time at higher levels. World of Warcraft players may recall Paladin-specific add-ons to facilitate Blessing entire raids when Blizzard didn't learn the same lesson early on. Most group buffs can also be targeted on other groups by toggling on the /togglegroupbuff or /tgb command, and affect the caster as well as the targeted group. Group buffs were given a boost in Shadows of Luclin with the Mass Group Buff AA at level 59 or higher, which turned a Group Buff into a buff that affected everyone, grouped or not, within a fairly wide radius but caused the spell to take double mana (you didn't actually need enough mana to cast a doubled spell; it just took you to 0 mana if you didn't have enough). Debuffs are the opposite of buffs, in that they cause detrimental effects to targets. Like buffs, they come in every flavor imaginable, debuffing AC, stats, attack, attack speed, resists, and so on. Debuff also covers things like mana draining spells, but by far the most popular debuff is Slow, which my current trio puts to very good use, given Kella's less-than-optimal tanking ability. Slows and resistance debuffs are the most populous category, as well; most caster classes have access to debuffs they can use to lower the resists they face most commonly. Enchanters debuff Magic with their Tash line, Magicians and Shamans debuff Magic, Fire, Poison and Cold resistance with their Malaise line, Necromancers debuff Fire, Poison and Disease with their Scent line, and Druids debuff Fire with their Ro's Fiery Sundering line and Cold with their E'ci's Frosty Breath line. An extra mechanic not documented anywhere except in some very old patch notes is the Innate Hybrid Spell Haste. See, Verant realized that hybrids were getting hosed over by spellcasting mechanics midway through Ruins of Kunark; a hybrid's DPS was always a mix of slightly-worse-melee caps than the Warrior, Rogue and Monk and their spellcasting. But as melee weapons got better, Hybrids were losing too much melee DPS uptime to cast their spells effectively, especially as higher level spells that, at the time, they were still by and large sharing with the caster side of their hybrid nature (Druids for Rangers, Clerics for Paladins, and Necromancers for Shadow Knights). Level 40+ spells for those classes, which Hybrids began to receive as they leveled closer to 60, had long cast times. So they introduced an innate cast time reduction; 3% for every level over 50, capping at 30% at level 60 at the time, but eventually going up to 50% by level 67. This only applied to non-beneficial spells that the hybrid classes cast. This was carried over into Beastlord, later, when they were created, as well. Songs, by and large, operate by these same rules; 8 songs memorized at a time, with single-target, point-blank area effect, and group versions. Some Bard "group" songs actually affected all players around them; this was mostly restricted to their later HP/Mana regeneration songs, so that they be of greater benefit to raids. However, as was stated in the classes post, all songs had set cast times, pulse refreshes if left running (every 6 seconds), and were completely unaffected by later additions to the game like Spell Foci. However, Bards had the original spell foci - Instruments. See, some Bard Songs either required an instrument to play, which originally you had to equip in your main hand and have no offhand weapon, or gained a greater benefit if you had an instrument in hand. Instruments had a wide range of percentage-based effects on songs, ranging from 10% to 140% in classic. Later instruments would have greater benefits, and AAs would help to increase that. All songs had a 360% effective increase cap; though again, AAs would later raise that cap to 420%. This number has definitely not helped the bard image. All spells (and only some few bard songs) run on the resource Mana, which is dependent upon your level, your statistic in your primary casting stat (INT for Casters and Shadow Knights, WIS for Priests, Paladins and Beastlords), and any +Mana gear you happen to be wearing. For literal years nobody knew exactly how much mana they had - this was an obfuscation mechanic. You could track your Mana through the blue bar in your UI, which had five sections originally, allowing you to roughly eyeball how much mana a spell cost vs your absolute maximum. You could always see the exact number a spell cost in the UI by inspecting the spell in your book or spellbar, but you could not see what your total even was. You could do rough calculations based on the formula or just cast a spell several times in a row and see how many times you could cast it before you couldn't cast it anymore. I actually sort of liked this obfuscation; it brought an element of fantasy to a very gamey mechanic. But ultimately, the developers relented and began to let you see the total amount of mana you had in the UI. Bard songs do not cost mana. Well, mostly. The only songs they have in this era that require mana is their Charm line - yes, Bards can charm like enchanters, but only for short durations - and their Fading Memories AA, which immediately removes them from any and all hate lists. Bards do not have mana regen unless they get Flowing Thought/+Mana Regen items, as their Meditate skill is capped at 1 and serves only to allow them to memorize their songs faster, and spells like Breeze and Clarity do nothing for their mana regeneration. Without items to increase it, their mana regeneration is restricted to 2/tick while sitting.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2022 07:26
|
|
|
Let's talk about the major Gods of EverQuest, whose influence is in the very world itself. The Nameless The Nameless simply is. It has no form, no shape, no personality; it is the cosmic force that drives the cosmos. The Nameless was the first thing to exist within the timeless Void, and as far as it knew, it was the only thing to exist. It spread itself outwards, and found Time and Space, which it freed from the pocket they were trapped in to let it spread everywhere and everywhen, changing the very nature of the Void. No longer was there Nothing, but now there was Thing. The Nameless, in this one act, caused the universe to be formed. And the universe was chaos, beyond the ken of the Nameless, so long without aught but itself, and so it reached into the chaos itself and brought fourth four pieces and shaped them into the Gods of Power, and tasked them with bringing form to its spawned madness. The Gods of Power The Rathe The first to be formed was the Rathe, and it was tasked to bring order to the chaotic universe. It saw the immensity of this task, and divided itself into twelve equal parts, becoming the Council of the Rathe. The Rathe crafted worlds out of the chaos, and watched over them from the Plane of Earth, also known as Vegarlson, the Earthen Badlands. Fennin Ro Fennin Ro was the second, and he drew Fire from the chaos, setting the stars crafted by the explosion of time and space alight to illuminate the cosmos. Fennin Ro gave warmth to the Rathe's creations, helping them to shape the worlds. Fennin Ro is known these days as the Tyrant of Fire, father of Solusek Ro, and rules the Elemental Plane of Fire also known as Doomfire, the Burning Lands. Water The Nameless drew a portion of the Chaos out and called it Water, and its task was too great for a single being. Following after the Rathe, the Nameless split this essence into three, naming them Tarew Marr, E'Ci, and Povar. Tarew Marr would lord over the fluid state of Water, E'Ci over its solid form, the Ice, and Povar over its gaseous form, the Steam. Each touched the worlds and shaped them anew, bringing water in all its forms to the worlds. These three would later become known as the Triumvirate of Water, with Tarew Marr the most known, and His relation to the twins Mithaniel and Erollisi Marr is a topic of debate; some speculate that He gave intelligence to the Influences of Love and Valor, and thus were born Mithaniel Marr and Erollisi Marr. E'Ci is became known as the Wintry Guardian, and if the Gods of Influence and Nature (see: player-selectable deities) can be believed, is a nigh-fanatical tyrant when it comes to control over Her realm. Povar is the one the least is known about, as nearly no acts or deeds can be ascribed to Them, not even shape, gender, or personality. Xegony Finally, the Nameless drew one last bit out of the chaos, and named it Xegony, tasked with separating matter and space. With a single breath, She blew away chaos and cushioned each world from the harshness of the newly-born cosmos, spacing out the cosmos in the process. Xegony later became known as the Queen of Air, and never turned Her attention away from her purpose, interested only in the true elements of the universe. The Nameless, having brought order to the released chaos, looked upon what its creations had wrought, and sorrowed, for it could never experience it for itself; for the newly-created cosmos could not contain the Nameless, who would be forever trapped in the Void, which was now pushed out to the very edges of creation. So it commanded its minions, the Gods of Power, to create minions themselves, through which the Nameless could experience creation. The Gods of Power combined their energies from each of their respective planes and brought forth beings of energy much like themselves, but on smaller scale; the Gods of Influence and Nature. Always keeping in mind that the energies of the universe must be balanced, lest it devolve to chaos again, they crafted Gods of darkness and destruction, Gods of light and creation, and Gods of neutrality to stand as balance between the two. RelentlessImp fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Jul 27, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2022 07:53
|
|
|
Speaking of spells I'm reminded that for a while WoW let you access all ranks of spells in your abilities book as you leveled up. At some point, either midway through vanilla or possibly some point Burning Crusade Blizzard decided to remove all that and just let you use the highest rank ones. The reason for this, or one of the reasons that I remember the most, was that they had discovered that Priests rarely used their highest tier healing because the one below that was far more mana efficient in comparison. As I recall a lot of people weren't too pleased when that decision was made.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2022 11:28
|
|
|
Cooked Auto posted:Speaking of spells I'm reminded that for a while WoW let you access all ranks of spells in your abilities book as you leveled up. Different spell ranks and downranking were still a thing in Burning Crusade, they just changed the math so it was a less of an efficiency gain (after previously nerfing the sub-L20 spell scaling in mid-vanilla). Half the healers still downranked in BC, because they didn't change the math enough. EQ is a different beast here, since it doesn't have spells scaling* with a potency stat like wow. Higher level spells of the same line are usually more mana efficient so there's little reason to "downrank". You might keep a couple ranks around so your smallest heal isn't half a health bar, but you're not doing the wow thing where you prefer spamming low level heals. The main exceptions are for a lot of utility debuffs: slows, snares, roots, mezzes, etc. These have duration and magnitude increased with rank, but paying double mana to go from a 40% slow to a 50% slow is not always an attractive proposition. *At least it didn't, I'm not sure about today. In classic EQ the only thing you could do for output scaling as a caster was make your mana bar longer, which was of very limited utility. Melee weren't much better off. They technically scaled, but Strength had a very small impact so the only real damage stats were weapon ratio, weapon damage procs, and the at the time extremely rare haste gear. It was a very different beast from even vanilla wow, where gear upgrades were constant and significant. At EQ release, casters cared about keeping up with their spell list (which involved horribly convoluted spell research), melee cared about their weapon and the Flowing Black Silk Sash (the single accessible haste item), and tanks were the only ones who really needed armor. Not, of course, that anyone knew that at literal release. I'm not sure how that has changed in the years since; clearly haste gear is more plentiful and lower level.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2022 13:42
|
|
|
Cooked Auto posted:Speaking of spells I'm reminded that for a while WoW let you access all ranks of spells in your abilities book as you leveled up. I played Priest in early WoW. Initially there was no +healing or +spellpower gear so casters kept falling behind melee as gear got better. Blizzard was so inspired by EQ that the original design was for casters to gain intellect to cast more spells before going OOM. The obvious flaw is that encounters take less time as gear gets better so the extra intellect did nothing. So they introduced caster healing and damage gear (later collapsed into spellpower). Spells benefited based on spell rank and cast time with full benefits at 2 second cast. For Priests, Heal rank 2 was the first spell that received full benefits of gear. It had 2 second cast versus Greater Heal's 2.5 seconds and mana cost I think 30% of the high rank GH. At around +400 healing H2 eclipsed every other spell for efficiency by far. This gear was easily obtainable so they had to change it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2022 13:47
|
|
|
Yeah I guess it happened much later than I remembered then. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2022 14:14
|
|
|
Changed in Cataclysm, was still a thing at the end of WotLK. Notably for Heroic Lich King Disc priests would downrank their Power Word: Shield to guarantee it popped for a mana refund, (and other heals downranked for more efficiency on what was a very long fight by WoW standards) I had some friends who played Everquest but at the time it was big lacked good enough internet to ever have a poke around at it myself, this is a interesting look at the more day to day aspects of gameplay rather than the endgame accounts I've heard.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2022 15:19
|
|
|
I EQ raided on dialup until I retired to play WoW sometime in late burning crusade. It worked quite well since all chat was coordinated through text channels and nobody used voice. It only got sketchy in underwater zones where the up/down bob of players caused so much positional update network traffic I would lag out. My guild was cool though and let me just kinda hang out through the Coirnav fight to get the flag. As a monk I still helped with the clear through the zone at least. To this day I've never seen the Coirnav fight I'd just lag out early and die and get play-by-play from a friend on the phone then when it was over take network settled my rez. Yeah the player model bob of levitation and swimming was server side and synced to everyone.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2022 15:33
|
|
|
 Well, we're all tired and Kella and Story have gone to bed, but I'm feeling restless. I think I'll go explore; we've been going pretty hard on naught but Adventures for the Wayfarers. I think I'll take a trip to the Temple of Solusek Ro and see what's up.Today's update features a lot of quests, and a partial world tour of Norrath. Buckle in.  We start with the Neriak stone down to Nektulos.  At the far northern end of Nektulos Forest is the way to Lavastorm Mountains.  Good Gods, the temperature just took a forty degree leap.   Lavastorm's theming is all fire, all the time. Here, in this last screenshot, we find the most important part of Lavastorm; there are three zone entrances around this lava pit. Solusek's Eye, also known as SolA, with a zone shorthand of soldunga, is a low 20s to mid-40s dungeon, but don't go in without snare. Lots of small, twisty corridors and a thick clustering of fire goblins. Nagafen's Lair, also known as SolB, with a zone shorthand of soldungb, has kobolds, imps, a genie, and in its deepest recesses, fire giants and Lord Nagafen himself, a red dragon that served as one of EverQuest's two first dragon raids. The fact that Dragons were the first raid bosses in EverQuest led to the creation of a term most MMO players will be familiar with, DKP, adopted by raiding guilds. Did you know that DKP stands for Dragon Kill Points? In raid guilds using the DKP system, you accrue points for attending raids and downing targets, and spend those points on loot. The final zone entrance, and the one we're concerned with today, is over on the left. This is the Temple of Solusek Ro, which was added to EverQuest six months after launch. Inside is a lot of class quests for mid-level gear for most classes, useful clickies, and when Kunark came around became involved in the Cleric epic.  That's an imposing set of doors.   The Temple of Solusek Ro is full of keepers, named NPCs that are involved in quests, either handing them out or being involved in others. Today, we're looking for Romar Sunto.  While trying to remember my way, I run across a room that will be important later for the Cleric Epic. See that Seeker on the left? He only spawns during the day, and will be involved when we go to get the Cleric click stick.  Finally, I find Romar in the bowels of the Temple. There you are. Hello, Sir Sunto. I hear you've something to do with the great Tash. Oh yes. Do tell me of Tash. You'll see references to Enchanters as jewelcrafters a lot. This is because, in EQ's tradeskilling, Enchanters were the ones who created Enchanted bars of metal through their spells, which were used to make stat-giving jewelry. It just became more convenient to do jewelcrafting on Enchanters because of this, and thus a piece of lore was added to Enchanters as a whole. Know an Enchanter? They're probably jewelcrafters! Tell me of the coin of Tash that you seek. Fascinating. I'll take the pouch and the Tome, thank you. He gives us a container. I didn't have any money on Gyyi, but thanks to Stromm Kral of the server Cazic-Thule, from way, way back in the day, I can bring you the book, as well.  Oh, I see. It's all coached in metaphor for a riddle to the clever mind. Well, it's not that hard to decipher. It looks like it's a road trip for me from Erudin to Ak'Anon.I'm going to simulate what this would have been like back in the day, prior to the books. Get ready for a long series of screenshots as we take a trip from one end of Norrath to the other.  We start with the Erudin stone. My only concession to this is I'm going to keep Spirit of Wolf on Gyyi by popping up stones as I go to cities and having Kella cast it. Keeping a SoW up would have been fairly easy back in classic, as all the zones we go through were pretty well-frequented by druids, rangers, and shamans leveling up.   Ah, the city library. It seems like forever ago that I was ensconced within its walls, studying the tomes that led me down this path. That's a teleporter that takes us into Erudin Palace. Erudin has five teleporters, in total; one into Erudin Palace, one to the docks and then back, and one down to Toxxulia Forest and back up into Erudin.  Erudin Palace is where the Caster Guilds lie, as well as Erudin's bank, jewelcrafting merchants, and various others. Unlike most palaces, there is no King or Ruler figure within its walls; Erudin is a collective, working towards the advancement of knowledge and research into the secrets of magic. Mostly.  In the city of Magic, where the water spouts... this looks accurate. There you are! All ten coins of Tash look exactly like this. Same icon, same identify box. The only way to tell them apart is the spell Identify, which, when you hold an item on your cursor and cast the spell on yourself, returns a line of lore text associated with the item. This one is Coin of the Tash - Beza.  Hm. It's been a while since I've been home. I might as well take in the sights and soak up the ambiance; I feel it'll be a long time before I'm back again.This is the teleporter out into Erudin again.   Erudites are one of the only races who pay any worship to Quellious. Clerics and Paladins of the Tranquil are exceedingly rare, given the Erudites' focus on intellectualism.   I love the general aesthetic of Erudin. The Deepwater Knights follow Prexus, god of the Ocean, and so do some Clerics. Erudites are again unique in this.  Back over near the Erudin Palace teleporter is this one, which will take us to the docks.  Well, near enough.    No idea if the boats function on this server, but here's how Erudin's works. Usually, you'd sit on the skiff there - wait, let me get a better picture of it.  Man I suck at photographing these things. Anyways, you'd sit on this skiff until the boat from Qeynos came, then it would mosey on over to the boat, which you would then board and wait for it to weigh anchor. For time's sake, we're going to take the Translocator.  EverQuest has a storied history with its boats. Most of the time, they'd work. But if you had a slow computer, or there was an error on the server's end, after the boat zoned into its next area you'd end up in the drink instead of on the boat. From time to time, boats just broke, and Translocators appeared at the docks to take you on a zone-by-zone trip across their intended path. In modern EverQuest, the translocators are on 24/7. A boat trip could take upwards of ten minutes, but you'd be waiting upwards of thirty for the next boat if you juuuuuust missed the boat. Boats do work on this server. But again, time.  We hit Erud's Crossing via the Translocator. Erud's Crossing was a somewhat popular leveling zone; its island had lots of willowisps, wanted for their Lightstone and Greater Lightstone drops - not only were they fabulous light sources, but could be left in a top-level inventory slot to provide it - very important for the night-blind Erudites, Humans and Barbarians - but could be sold to players for a decent chunk of coin. Their real purpose lay in giving them to certain NPCs in North Karana and South Ro in order to acquire experience, great big chunks of it all the way to 20. Those quests resulted in a copy of Runes and Research Vol. I and Vol. II for lightstones, and a Concordance of Research for Greater Lightstones. This goes back to tradeskills. See, you didn't just get a list of recipes; you had to buy in-game books to find them, and memorize them. Vol. I detailed the process of Research itself, and Vol. II told you how to make Practice, Apprentice, Training, Journeyman, Study, Expert, Master and Magi Runes Azia and Beza, which raised the Research skill. The Research skill was of vital importance to Enchanters, Magicians, Wizards and Necromancers, as any number of important spells could only be obtained through Research. For Necromancers, their level 34 Lich spell - HP to Mana conversion - Call of Bones, for Wizards the vast majority of their targeted AE nukes and the all-important Ice Comet, for Magicians fully half of their pets at every spell level and three out of four for level 49, and for Enchanters a variety of spells, like Color Shift at level 20 and Allure at level 49, their highest-level classic Charm. Anyways, we continue on to Qeynos via the Translocator here.  Welcome to South Qeynos!     There's a tent city in South Qeynos that various merchants use to hawk their wares.   Fireprides is the home of a dwarven family of smiths. It was the first, and generally only, dwarves that Qeynos-area humans ever saw until they ventured across the continent.  Qeynos Hold is the bank of Qeynos.   Qeynos' caster guild. Adequate, I suppose. It's no Erudin Palace, though. Ah, the Clock Tower of Qeynos. Crafted by Gnomes and gifted to the city, this was host to a mystery in EverQuest for a while.  See these runes? They're words. It took a while to translate them. The outer cicle of runes say "Ak'Anon Gnomes", while the inner says "Qeynos", both spelled backwards.  Next to the clock tower is North Qeynos' zoneline.    Here's what we want.   ...That really is just a floating vessel. Huh. "In the city of Law, where the temple floats."  Gotcha! You know, Qeynos really is quite a lovely city. So very different from Erudin, but it's warm and welcoming. And now... sigh Halas. A willowisp! The problem with willowisps is their corpses continue to move. It can be hard to tell a dead willowisp from a live willowisp.  Getting to Halas requires going through Blackburrow.  How long ago was it we set foot in here and found ourselves unequal to the task? These days, I'm certain Kella and Sascha could make quick work of the entire place... Far on the other end of the top level is a series of tunnels that leads to Everfrost Peaks, home of the Barbarians.  It's a long, upwards run out of Blackburrow and into Everfrost itself.  Brr... perhaps I should have gotten some furs. Well, I'm sure things will be fine...  Ice goblins, a frequent enemy in Permafrost Keep on the far east of the Peaks. Not only is Permafrost the home of these goblins, but also to Lady Vox, the white dragon, who is also a Cleric that casts Complete Healing on herself when you try to kill her. Vox raids can take longer than Nagafen raids if you can't manage to do enough push to interrupt her. I'll cover melee push and NPCs later in a mechanics post.  After a long journey through the peaks, which is boring because it's all mostly tightly-packed valleys like the tree picture up above, we find the lights of Halas.  Barbarians and Erudites aren't the best of friends, but they're by no means murderous towards each other. They represent the two extremes of humanity; the pursuit of intellectualism and the rugged survivalism and war.  Just outside of Halas lay a few merchants. A good place to offload things a newbie Barbarian doesn't want to use to get spell money, but when approaching merchants, you have to be careful. See, not all merchants are created equal. Some are "greedy" merchants, which offer half the sell price and sells things at double price. There are thankfully not that many greedy merchants; the most famous is the Shady Swashbuckler in East Commonlands, one of the only merchants in the game who sells magic weapons if you can't manage to find one before you accumulate 300+ platinum pieces.  Ah, Halas. We'll explore in a second; we have a coin to retrieve. "In the city of Ice, where the water cools..." I'm going to have to get wet, aren't I?  Blub blub! (Got it!) Hhhhhhuhhh... I'm freezing. Icy climes and cold water are not a good combo. I need to find a place to get out of these sodden robes for a bit...   Barbarian Guards are all identical.   H-h-hey, barkeep! W-what do you have for someone who-who-who's f-f-f-freezing? P-p-p-perfect!Gyyi spends a few hours huddled next to the fire and drinking mead to warm and dry herself. These merchants are named after Brad McQuaid, one of the original developers and designers of EverQuest, known in-game as Aradune Mithra, a Ranger with a flaming sword and green plate armor. Brad McQuaid tragically passed away in 2019. Brad McQuaid is perhaps the most famous of the devs; he was the one who promoted The Vision, a design philosophy for EverQuest, though it was the brainchild of John Smedley. Aradune was the most visible, certainly; he interacted with the community far more than any other. After he left EverQuest, he co-founded Sigil Games Online and helped design Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, an unfortunately overhyped and overpromised MMO that was just another World of Warcraft clone wearing an EverQuest-ish skin. Later in life, he began development on Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, promising a return to EverQuest-style gaming; that game is still in development as of this post. I personally did not like Brad McQuaid. He overpromised on Vanguard, and while not as bald-faced a liar as, say, Peter Molyneux or Sean Murray, it was still a betrayal at the time. I will always respect him for what he did to help bring EverQuest to life, however, and he will live in our memories for a good, long time.  Anyways, this is what happens when you get drunk. Your field of view fisheyes - it goes very fisheyed if you are extremely drunk - and you walk while swaying left and right. On this client, it's absurdly fast swaying.  It also trashes your Wisdom and Intelligence. You build up Alcohol Tolerance skill by drinking, and can only drink so much before you can't drink any more. Alcohol Tolerance makes it so it takes more alcohol to get you fully drunk, and makes you recover from drunkenness faster.  I yam NAWT taking anudder swim... I yam goink to ride thissz raft to the udder side. Buh-bye Halas! Thankzz for da drinks! ...How did I get back to Blackburrow? At least I'm not soaking wet any longer... anyways, onwards! Back out in Qeynos Hills, we find our way to the exit to West Karana, passing by the Guard Tower. Guard Towers are a frequent site on this side of Antonica, each one staffed by 2-4 guards.  Passages like this are very common as funnels towards zone lines. There are some zones, like some of the Karanas and the line between Oasis of Marr and North Ro, where zone lines line the entire border of the zone, but usually they made zone lines very small.  It's raining in West Karana. This statement is usually followed by other obvious statements, like water is wet.  Man, I JUST got dry from Halas...  The Karanas, especially the Western Plains, are home to various human settlers and farmers, as well as bandits.  And lions.  Pictured: one of the farms.   Your money or your life! Aren't you just... precious. I mean it, lady! I'm sure you do. Unfortunately... ...or perhaps fortunately, my friends aren't with me, so you can just stay there, trapped in your own little head, while I move on. Ta-ta, sweetheart. Next time, don't mess with an erudite. Somewhere in this picture is the zone line to North Karana.   The Northern Plains of Karana are going to be a quick visit.  These spires are midway into the plains, and mark the all-important bridge that we want to see today.  This bridge is the only valid zone crossing into South Karana.
|
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2022 23:53
|
|
|
      It's amazing how much world-building you can do with just a couple of NPC placements, isn't it?  South Karana was a surprisingly popular zone. The undead pictured here play a part in a quest for a very nice shield that can be worn on the back for Clerics and Paladins...  ...Treants serve the same role as giants, in that they have a lot of money on them for some reason, making them a popular cash camp - there's a static two span on the west side of south Karana...  ...these spires mark the entrance to Splitpaw Lair, another gnoll-filled dungeon that has undergone several revamps in EverQuest's history - originally a level 7-16 dungeon known as Infected Paw, it was revamped into a mid-30s dungeon, and then later, a high-50s dungeon when elementals from the Plane of Earth invaded and killed most of the gnolls. In modern EverQuest, the Splitpaw Clan is an endangered species.  A very different model from the gnolls of Blackburrow.  The foreboding hole into the earth is the entrance.    Ahh, Aviak Village. You'd find young mid-teens druids soloing here, due to the wide-open spaces, and groups laying claim to several of the birds at a time.  Just past them is the entrance to Lake Rathetear.  Lake Rathetear is an interesting zone. It is mostly water, with encampments along its shores of gnolls, aviaks, and bandits. The island in the center is home to some quest NPCs. Okay, I am tired of being wet. It's time to do something about it. And I have just the thing. This is the Air Elemental illusion. For as long as it persists, Gyyi has levitate. Later, the illusion and the levitate buff were split into separate buffs; the illusion would last the half hour or so, while the levitate buff would last 3 hours. This is still in place on Time-Locked Progression servers - all the Elemental Illusion buffs work the same way, so you could cast all four and get all four benefits for a very long time.   And thus freed from the bonds of gravity, Gyyi begins floating across the water. There's sharks in these waters, which makes her decision to fly instead of swim even better.   Bandits and ogres persist on those two shores. You can see little docks, as well; EverQuest has small boats that you can jump into and pilot, but they are horribly slow - but faster than having no swimming skill.  Past that dock in the last screenshot is the entrance to the Rathetear Mountains.  Most famous for its glut of Hill Giants - which cease to exist in such huge numbers once the Guktans move in - Rathetear Mountains generally sees very little use outside of giant-hunting. But it is full of lizardmen, Unkempt Druids (evil-ish druids - ecoterrorists, basically), giant skeletons, ogres... and sphinxes and named beetles with no real known purpose but to exist.   There's also this camp. There are camps like this all over Norrath. These are the models of the Romani slur I refuse to type. These camps usually serve as a place to buy and sell stuff. Thankfully, Verant didn't make them greedy merchants, which would have made the slur even worse.  Rathe Mountains also has some few settlements.     No, I don't know why these inns have bunk beds; probably something to do with space being at a premium or something.  Just past those buildings is the path that will lead us to the Feerrott.    There are six of these beetles, split into groups of three, aligned with the two Sphinxes of Rathe Mountains. You can infer a lot from just some faction hits, too. Ankhnesmerira, Ankhetperure, and Ankhesenaten are aligned with Ankhefenmut, while Zazamaharet, Zazamenhu and Zazaphenebti are aligned with Zazamoukh. The sphinxes were later associated with the Beastlord Epic 1.5, giving them a "purpose".  Finally, the Feerrott looms ahead of us.    The Feerrott is a jungle, and within it lies the home of the Ogres, Oggok, which we'll be visiting.   This bridge lies close to Oggok, so we're taking precautions since Ogres look upon most other sentient species as a meal or something fun to club to death.  ...Could be worse, I suppose.Something you might notice is that Gyyi's robe doesn't show up while she's illusioned. This was... you know, I don't know what the reasoning was. They probably simply didn't think it'd ever come up. Of the races, Halflings, Dwarves, Ogres, Trolls, Half-Elves, Wood Elves, and Halflings can be no kind of arcane caster, which were the only ones who wore robes as a matter of course (aside from a few Monk-wearable robes), so they simply didn't have a robe graphic made for their models. You just get discolored skin, instead. This included later when some Robes were wearable by non-caster races, such as the Robe of the Azure Sky from Veeshan's Peak in Kunark, which was wearable by everyone but dwarves, half-elves and halflings. The Shadows of Luclin models corrected this by including robe graphics for EVERY race, but they never went back and gave the pre-Shadows of Luclin models robe models.  Why yes, that is a severed dwarf torso hanging upside down over a firepit, why do you ask?  Looks like they don't suspect me of being anything other than an ogress... am I an attractive ogress? Let's not question that and just... get inside.One of the features of illusions is they modify your faction levels, as well. Assuming the same race as another being can only improve you in the eyes of most of the NPCs of the classic Norrath world. Fantasy racism, alive and well! How big of a shift is it in this case, though? Prior, we were kill-on-sight. Now?  There are 9 levels of faction in EverQuest, ranging from -3000 to +1250 values, each denoted by a consider message. Those are: "scowls at you, ready to attack" - -3000 to -751 "glares at you threateningly" - -750 to -501 "glowers at you dubiously" - -500 to -101 "looks your way apprehensively" - -100 to -1 "regards you indifferently" - 0 to 99 "judges you amiably" - 100 to 499 "kindly considers you" - 500 to 749 "looks upon you warmly" - 750 to 1099 "regards you as an ally" - 1100 to 1250 These are modern numbers. We never really knew the exact ranges back in the day, so we'll just use these here. EverQuest eventually added a Faction Window where you could see exact values, as well as exact values you gain on kills that have associated faction messages.  Illusions fade on zoning. I forget this briefly and get a guard on my rear end and have to run away. We pop back in and illusion up.  Now nobody in Oggok will kill us.   Ogres were once the best and brightest of Rallos Zek's armies. Now they live in stone huts and caves, with a deific curse of idiocy placed upon them. They would eventually get free of the curse.         We finally find our way to the Warrior guild.  It's surrounded by water that's steaming... "In the city of War, where the water boils..." Well, let's hope it's not actually boiling. Gluuuuuub! (Hoooooooot!) Glub glub! (Got you!) I am so glad I take showers in scalding hot water, otherwise I might never have survived that.  Back out in the Feerrott, we run our asses to the southeast corner to the Innothule Swamp, adjacent to the jungle.  Thankfully, you can hug the walls and never dip your toes in the swamp water. It's slower than going across, but safer. Well, I know the trolls don't like me, so I might as well... Oh Gods, this feels... disgusting. Powerful, but disgusting. I can actually feel the regenerative blood in my veins. Down at the south end of Innothule, we find Grobb.   I remember to illusion up after zoning this time. "In the city of Swamp, where the ale flows..."   The Trolls have a less primitive city than the Ogres. Trolls are fairly evenly split between the worship of their creator, Cazic-Thule, and the worship of Innoruuk, a movement heralded by High Shaman Zraxth, a powerful shaman that meddled in the darkest of magics both spiritual and arcane during the age of the Rallosian Empire. The Trolls were oppressed by the dominant Rallosian armies, and Zraxth drew about him a cult of hatred that gave praise to Innoruuk - small, at first, where they would perform profane ceremonies that channeled their hatred to give power to their brothers. Their efforts were at first futile, and Zraxth turned to Innoruuk to ask for power. Innoruuk demanded a blood tithe, and so Zraxth and his cult slaughtered the high priests of Cazic-Thule to utilize their blood in the next ritual proscribed by Innoruuk. For eight days, Zraxth meditated before a great stone tablet blessed by Innoruuk, without food or sleep, utilizing the blood to grant himself foresight. On the eighth day, Zraxth spoke, and his disciples tried to record the words; but no page could hold them, the ink running off their parchments. Zraxth, in his trance, took the tablet and began to chisel the words with the blood of the high priests, using a chisel made from their bones. Each symbol he laid into the stone blazed with dark flames and settled. When the stone cooled, Zraxth's disciples saw the words, and they appeared to have always been within the stone, instead of carved into it. Zraxth's words foretold the coming of the Grozmok, the greatest of all trolls that would unite the clans through Fear and Hate combined. His knowledge of war and magic would destroy the Rallosian Empire, and the stone tablet would be his symbol of power. No true Grozmok would rise without it, but many false Grozmoks would die for it. The ceremony killed Zraxth, and his disciples cremated his corpse and spread his ashes, returning to their tribes to take up their old positions and preach the prophecy of Grozmok. The Rallosians heard of the prophecy, raided the tribe who held the stone, slaughtered them and locked up the stone in their secure vaults, to steal away the hopes of their slaves. Once the curse of idiocy hit the empire, however, the two troll tribes of Clan Broken Skull and Clan Ykesha warred for dominance over the lands once held by the Empire. Eventually, Clan Ykesha found the stone in one of the defunct vaults, and gave it to Warlord Ykesha. Upon translation, Ykesha thought Grozmok must be he; he was not. But many trolls flocked to Ykesha, but Innoruuk, displeased by the fading hate that the unity of the clans under Ykesha brought, planted seeds of doubt into Ykesha's mind. Ykesha grew reclusive and paranoid, and gradually insane, and Clan Ykesha began to break apart. Clan Broken Skull took advantage and shattered them and laid claim to the stone. Clan Ykesha persisted, however, under Warlord Jurgash, and became Clan Grobb. These are the trolls that the player Trolls are descended from. This new Clan Grobb, under Jurgash, was growing calm and peaceful again, and Innoruuk interfered again, giving one of the Grobb mystics a vision of the location of the stone of Grozmok. Clan Grobb invaded Broken Skull Rock and took back the stone, and now it lays protected deep within Grobb. Young Trolls know not of the prophecy of Grozmok, while the elders are waiting for their savior still. There is a lot of lore to this game, and not all of it was in the game at the start. I believe this was added around the era of Legacy of Ykesha.  Near a bar, we find the next stone. Yoink! Outside, we levitate across the swamp and head north.  We pause here. This is Stragak. Stragak holds most of the shaman damage-over-time, cure and resist buff spells for the Trolls. He's close to the Northern Edge of the zone. Finding these spells is a rite of passage for young trolls.  Finally, we find our way to South Ro. You've all seen it, so I'm going to skip over most of this trip.  In the center of the Oasis of Marr lays the tower. It's haunted by spectres. This was a very popular mid-30s to low-40s camp for solo players, as you could get one spectre at a time if you possessed calm spells or the ability to split pulls. Countless Druids, Enchanters, Wizards - who quad-kited them - Necromancers and Shadow Knights spent time here, leveling.  We finally find ourselves in Nektulos Forest. Well, I know the dark elves don't want to kill me, but I may as well... I feel... deadly. Like I want to kill someone but just to cause them as much pain as possible without actually letting them die. And... unbelievably sensual. Is this what Story feels like all the time? I could get used to this... Down in the Neriak Commons, we find our way to the water I showed in an earlier update, and the area outside of the Blind Fish. "In the city of Darkness, where the blind fish stares..." This is for a Wizard quest - namely, Staff of the Wheel, which leads into getting the runes for the Ice Comet spell.  Glubbit! (Gottit!) We find our way to Freeport, because we have to head to Faydwer, but also we have a quick pit stop. In for a copper, in for a platinum. Not much difference. Huh. I'm cute as hell, though, I'll admit.    "In the city of Divided, where the building floats."Freeport is famously divided. You have the Freeport Militia, which are dickholes of corrupt guards, contrasting the Temple of Marr, where worshipers of Light, Love and Justice fight for those ideals, and the Dismal Rage, the Innoruuk worshipers in the sewers. These three factions control different aspects of Freeport. You can see the bag floating above the water in that last shot. Seven down, three to go.             Just East Freeport. I like the design of Freeport. It was horribly mangled when they updated Freeport; it's now a hideous, ugly city on every live server, including Time-Locked Progression servers. I'll show off North Freeport another time. We hit up the Translocator to go to Ocean of Tears, the ocean separating the eastern side of Antonica from Faydwer, Kunark and Velious alike.  There's one of the boats, leaving as we enter. We pop in on Sister Isle, an island full primarily of female wood elves, who when killed drop items called Purity Belts. Yeah. Leaving that little red flag of the designers aside, we hit up the Translocator to head to Butcherblock Mountains.      Welcome to Kaladim.  Might as well keep it going. Well, I didn't grow a beard. What did the book say about Kaladim, again? "In the city of Stone, where the water sits." Hmm... As you might expect, the doors are built for dwarves. Any race taller than a dwarf has to duck to get in these buildings.  Outside the Warrior's Guild of Kaladim...  ...we find our next coin. Just two more...     Dwarves and ogres do not get along. Corflunk and the wandering greenbloods - which is the name of the Ogre Shadow Knight guild, 'Greenbloods', for the fact that they bleed green - are part of some dwarf quests.   In the Greater Faydark, we find our way to Felwithe. "In the city of Light, where the water ends..." Well, let's go be an elf. I think I just lost half my body mass. I feel like I'm floating with my feet on the ground. This is such a weird sensation...  The Paladin guild.    Cleric guild.  There's water just beyond this, holding our next coin at its dead end.  Glubbb! (Mine!) Swimming out, I decide to take a trip to South Felwithe to show off their answer to Erudin Palace and Freeport.  ...How is that even supported?This building contains three teleporters that take you to the Magician, Enchanter and Wizard guilds.  I quite like Felwithe's design; vine-covered buildings is very elfy. We head to Steamfont Mountains via Lesser Faydark.   The gnomish city of Ak'Anon, like the dwarf city of Kaladim, lies underground. But that's where the differences end.  I haven't been this short since I was seven years old. Feels... kinda fun, actually. Now, let's see... "In the city of Metal, where the water falls." Ak'Anon is a city of clockworks. The clockwork NPCs nearly outnumber the gnome NPCs.   A giant underground lake and waterfall sits in the center of Ak'Anon.  The palace of King Ak'Anon. A clockwork king.  These tunnels are small; without illusioning, Gyyi would be crouching to get through here.   Those gears are animated and spin in time.  This leads to the primary shopping area of Ak'Anon. And the zoo.    I was not kidding about the zoo.   Further down in Ak'Anon, we find more water and gears.   This is where we want to be.  We cross the water wheel.  And here's our final coin. Well, that was ... exhausting. With all ten coins in the pouch, we hit combine, and...  And now we have to go to High Keep.You've all seen the run back at level 8, so we skip right to Tarn Visilin to enchant the coin. Pretend I got a port to Rivervale and ran here to keep the classic concept.    I decide to run to Neriak from here.     It's a longer run than the screenshots suggest.  West Commonlands. A nice bit of world-building was the way that 989 dotted inns all across classic zones to give the feel of a medieval world where major pathways would have resting points scattered along the way.  Back in Neriak Third Gate, this symbol is everywhere.  As is this one.   Finally, we get to the library of Third Gate.    Back to Erudin? That's the entire world awa-- oh, right, the books. I run to Freeport to use the book back to PoK, just to prolong this a bit more and to simulate getting a port out of East Commonlands, then down to Erudin again.    At this point I just book back to Knowledge, then down to Neriak, and run to the Temple of Solusek Ro again.    And that is the Tashania quest. To give you an idea of how long this would have taken back in the day, I timed myself. I began the quest - talking to Romar - at 8:30pm. With SoW and no books, I got the tenth coin at 10:30pm. With only the Rivervale and Erudin books, I finished enchanting the coin at 11:03pm. And finally, I did the final turn-in at 11:11pm. Doing the Tash quest could have been an entire day of play for someone who didn't have Spirit of Wolf constantly on them and having to take the boats and getting no teleports. The boat trips alone would have added a good 25-45 minutes depending on luck of catching the boat, and the lack of SoW easily could have added an entire hour to the trip. Personally, I've done this quest a few times this way on TLPs, P99 and TAKP, only getting ports at the end when you have to go all the way back to Toxxulia Forest and then back to Lavastorm. The final part is usually offering a druid 200-500 platinum depending on how frustrated I am at the time with all this running around to port me to Toxx from EC, hit me with a SoW, then wait for me while I run in and get the coin enchanted, then take me to Lavastorm so I can finish. Tashania is important, though. Our last Tash upgrade was at level 20, and our next one is at level 57. And mob resists are going to grow, especially as we move out of Lost Dungeons of Norrath content. The less we have to deal with charm breaks, the better. Next time: the Legacy of Ykesha quests. RelentlessImp fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Jul 29, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 28, 2022 23:53
|
|
|
The translocator reminds me of Captain Placeholder in WoW, who teleported people across the ocean from Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor during a period when the devs had somehow managed to break the boats between there. Who in the end turned out to be a kinda popular NPC as I remember and people were a bit sad to see him good. I think he even got a song dedicated to him.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2022 00:25
|
|
|
Cooked Auto posted:The translocator reminds me of Captain Placeholder in WoW, who teleported people across the ocean from Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor during a period when the devs had somehow managed to break the boats between there. https://youtu.be/-2xuO8JBepM WoW Classic not having Captain Placeholder in the game on release was a drat crime 
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2022 05:04
|
|
|
 ...and then they wanted me to run all the way back to Erudin, then Neriak, and finally, back to the Temple. Why didn't you just use the books? I did once they started wanting me to backtrack. But I'd never seen that much of the world before. I guess that explains why you kept coming to me for Spirit of Wolf, though. Look, it was just exhausting, but it was pleasant. I'm surprised your illusions were able to fool my people, though. Your magic is quite potent even when you're not making slaves of our enemies. I don't know if I'd call them "illusions", per se; there's a definite physical alteration that goes along with it. I wasn't aware the school of Illusion also dealt with polymorphing. So it seems. Well, shall we get back to some adventures? So long as it isn't back into Takish-Hiz just yet. I should think not. I don't feel like getting that tired again today. Well, let's get back to Rujarkian Hills, then.And so we do.    We find some pants upgrades for Kella.  loving score. Mana regen items are extremely valuable; originally known as Flowing Thought and introduced in Velious, it came in ranks from I to IV, and you could only stack forms of Flowing Thought with other ranks; two Flowing Thought Is didn't stack, but a Flowing Thought I, II, III and IV did stack with each other. In Jan 2002, shortly after the release of Shadows of Luclin, they started to allowing Flowing Thought to stack with itself, as they were introducing more and more Flowing Thought items into the game with Shadows of Luclin, the easiest to obtain of which was the Earring of the Solstice, which required acquiring 9 items crafted by players and combining them into a Forge to craft Xanthe's Earring of Nature and the spell Protection of Cabbage; Xanthe's Earring of Nature, wearable only by Druids, could then be taken to an NPC in Fungus Grove and exchanged for an Earring of the Solstice, which had Flowing Thought I on it and was usable by everyone. Around Gates of Discord or Omens of War - I forget precisely which - abilities that had previously been spell effects, such as Flowing Thought, Aura of Battle (+ATK and Regen) became just straight stats added onto items. Focus effects, and melee focus effects, remained the same, but things that simply increased regeneration of health or mana or just added attack stats simply became stats. This was part of the deobfuscation of EverQuest, and signaled the start of a rampant increase of Secondary Stats throughout high-end gear that eventually proliferated to low-level gear in future expansions. Anyways, this little trinket goes into a piece of Kedrustorii's gear. More mana regen on the healer is never a bad idea.  This also goes onto Kedrustorii. This focus effect has a 1-7% chance to keep you from using a Reagent on spells that require it up to level 60; its big brother, Reagent Conservation, has a 15% chance. I'm going to be very surprised, shortly.  We find another named mob in another dungeon.   Not a bad 2hb, but we did just acquire a better one via Coppermart.  At level 44, via a spell that drops in Velious zones and picked up in the Bazaar by us, Gyyi learns to do this. Boon of the Garou is a level 44 Enchanter spell that turns any target into a werewolf, boosts Dexterity by 100, and adds lifetap proc that scales up to 35 damage to their melee attacks. It's a pretty good buff, but has a short duration and a long recast; with an Extended Enhancement focus effect, if you cast it the moment it was up, you could keep it up on two party members simultaneously, with only the slightest of gaps.  We hit level 45 in short order; if you see that (with a bonus) added onto "You gain experience" message, it's that WFH found and banned someone engaged in RMT, and turned on double experience for the night. We also found another one of those staffs off a giant wolf.  This was unnecessary. I have 1220 platinum on Gyyi, and I've cast a buff to increase her Charisma to reduce prices.  Say hello to Kirem Deepfacet, purveyor of gemstones. Gemstones like Peridots, which fuel the highest Cleric symbol spells, and I assumed Temperance and Blessing of Temperance on this server.  In preparation of Temperance, and having scribed Blessing of Temperance, I begin to buy Peridots at 10 platinum, 8 silver each.  It's nice to see that things stack to 100 on this server with this client, though. I wound up spending some plat on training sessions for Abjuration on Gyyi and Kedrustorii just to boost them up; the problem with leveling on this server the way I have been is it's too fast. Kedrustorii has been casting her buffs maybe once to twice per level, so her Abjuration has fallen far behind. Anyways I wind up spending around 700 platinum to get 70 Peridots.  Blessing of Temperance is ready to be cast, but that is a huge mana requirement. How much mana does Story have?  Ah, she can just barely cast it. We go to cast it and... fizzles. Fizzles, fizzles, fizzles.  So I shove Kedrustorii in an out of the way place and start chaincasting her level 1 buff to build her Abjuration, making a macro to cast it five times in a row. The nice thing about Plane of Knowledge, Nexus and the Bazaar on this server is that buffs don't tick down; I can simply cast Clarity and Spiritual Light on Story and she'll keep that mana regen forever. So I spend time letting her cast and recast until her Abjuration is sufficient to cast a level 45 Abjuration. Ah, right, Spiritual Light. It's the first of a series of spells for Beastlords that they first gain access to at level 44. Our first group buff, in that cast it once it affects the entire group, adds 3 hp and mana regeneration, and stacks with literally everything. They get an upgrade to it at level 52 (+5hp/mana), 59 (+7hp/mana), and 64 (+9hp/mana). This is currently only a third as much as Clarity's currently +9/tick (it scales up a little as you level, maxing at 9), which will upgrade at 54 (Clarity II, +11/tick), 60 (Koadic's Endless Intellect, +14/tick), 63 (Tranquility, +16/tick), and 65 (Voice of Quellious, +18/tick), but they don't become group spells until 52 (Boon of the Clear Mind, group Clarity) 59 (Gift of Pure Thought, group Clarity II), and Koadic's Endless Intellect. Once Omens of War launches on this server, the pattern continues, with Clairvoyance (68, +20/tick) being a single-target spell and Voice of Clairvoyance (70, same) being the group version. Beastlords get another upgrade in Omens, in the form of Spiritual Ascendance (69, +10 hp/mana per tick). Just call us the mana regen crew.  Finally, Kedrustorii has enough Abjuration to cast Blessing of Temperance, and I discover it costs no peridots. I just blew 700 platinum on stones in the expectation of using them for cleric buffs. That's fine, they can also be used for the Gyyi's rune spells. Rune spells are Enchanter-specific spells that absorb melee damage before they fade, useful for a class that draws so much aggro and especially while charming at higher levels. They come in three flavors; the gem-costing Rune line, which caps out at Peridots, the componentless Berserker Spirit line, which absorbs far less but is cheaper to cast, and the Rune AAs, which absorb a comparable amount of damage as their Rune line but costs no mana or stones. Necromancers and Wizards also get a line of similar spells that you can call Runes, because they work the same, but are self-only, and usually are appended with the word "skin", like Leatherskin and Diamondskin. They also cost components, capping at Peridots. I'll be making extensive use of Gyyi's Rune spells later, after I get access to Rune V (we have Rune IV now).  Alright, guys. We've all heard about spells accessible in the Gulf of Gunthak. Shall we go check it out? Absolutely. I don't see why not.We don't go down the Gulf of Gunthak stone, simply because I'm in a mood to show off the world some more. We book down to Paineel to go through the Warrens to access Stonebrunt Mountains.  How long has it been since we first set foot in here and began to grow more powerful? Seems like ages ago, but I guess it's only been about a month. Phew. And it looks like the kobolds want nothing to do with us now that we've grown stronger.          We find one of the special mobs up, so we kick its rear end.  This is for a Heretic-specific quest. We leave it on the corpse.    And finally, Stonebrunt Mountains.   Stonebrunt was added to the game in 2001, and was the final stand-alone Optional Patch zone added to the game, after Temple of Solusek Ro, Paineel, Warrens and the Hole. It's a wide open space full of a few very specific quests and having added some quests to the game that begin in other places.  Which is why when I find Slyder the Ancient up I kick his rear end. There's some very nice Caster stuff available from killing the Named Animals, both in drops and from quests in Erudin and Paineel, but unfortunately...  Slyder declines to drop his snake skin which would let me get the legs associated with his quest, and Gyyi's already wearing the mantle, picked up for practically nothing in the Bazaar. Oh well, stuff to feed the trader later.   So these are Kerrans, huh? Are you sure Vah Shir are descended from them? Positive. They don't seem to have advanced very far. They haven't, but we haven't been colonizing them. We've left them be. It's better that way, compared to what the Combine and the Bayles did. No argument there.Unlike most boats, the boat here has those double doors you click on to go to Gulf of Gunthak rather than waiting for it to leave.  Welcome to Gulf of Gunthak, the entry point into the Legacy of Ykesha expansion.  What in the HELLS are those? Drogmor. An alternative to horses. What the hell kind of alternative are little frog-lizard-things? Suitable ones, for smaller races, I assume. ... Story? You okay? ... Uhm, Story? You've been staring at those drogmor for ages now... THEY'RE SO loving CUTE I WANT TO HUG THEM AND RIDE THEM AND KEEP FIFTEEN BILLION IN MY HOME! My ears! Your ears? Mine are bleeding. Actually bleeding! Oh. Uhm. Sorry. Lemme just heal that and-- Oh, look, that drogmor's using its disturbingly long tongue to lap up water. EXTREMELY HIGH-PITCHED NOISE AUDIBLE ONLY TO DOGS, CATS, AND DROGMOR MY loving EARS!After far too much of this hilarity...   What exactly is this place? How many of your knights have fallen? What's this about a key? Tell me of your Clerics. Alina and Chester are, in fact, dead. They serve as quest turn-in points for Cleric and Paladin spells, respectively.   I am, in fact, a Beastlord, yes. I am invested. If I lost Sascha I would kill everyone around and then mysef. Draw me more about your warder and I'll see if I can help.  Welcome to the hell that is my life for the past day and a half. This isn't even the level 40 spell. This is for the level 52 spell, which you have to do first before you get access to the level 40 quest text.  Welcome to Gulf of Gunthak. We have a lighthouse and a lot of water. Let's get to swimmin'. I'm not bothering with the Enchanter spells just yet, the level 52 one is very nice but we can't do anything about it just yet, the mobs involved are simply too strong. We'll be back at 54 to collect both Story's and Gyyi's level 52 spells, when we stand a chance against the enemies needed.  Swimming, like a lot of things, is a skill in EverQuest. How fast you swim is dependent entirely on your Swimming skill, maxing out at 200 skill. Also, its chance of skilling up is based on the higher of your INT or WIS, and Kella doesn't have near as much of either as Kedrustorii and Gyyi do. I'll show you guys a trick to AFK skillup your swimming later.  In the distance, the beach of the Gulf of Gunthak comes into view. The beach itself is littered with undead, insinuated to be the corpses of everyone who's died in a shipwreck at the Gulf.   Scavengers, corpses, and mosquitos. Anyways, we want to get past this, so we hug the wall and kill a scav, and then we're in the tunnel.  I have had to, until recently, do a workaround to patch for this server. I finally managed to solve the problem, so next time, I'm assuming targetable drogmors won't look like naked human males now that I can patch it properly. But this is what you see when your client doesn't have the data to render a model properly - naked human males.  I turn both Kella and Sascha into werewolves to speed things up. This has an effect I forgot about, which you'll see shortly.    I really should have invised up and headed through the cave instead of fighting my way. But hey, here's the Legacy of Ykesha troll model, based on the Shadows of Luclin model. Every race has a representative in Legacy of Ykesha, and they all use updated models. This is notable because it gave all the female models boob swinging physics. You can see the troll's boobs on the upswing in that last screenshot. Yes, even the rotting undead troll female models have boob physics. I just know this expansion was someone's zombie girl fetish sexual awakening. It's exactly as disturbingly, sadly horny as you'd expect from the early aughts.  I decide to gently caress fighting and just run through to the end of the tunnel. This is a pirate cove, full of luggalds and pirates. We run past everything, outpacing everything thanks to Spirit of Wolf.   We zone into Dulak Harbor. I'll show that off another time; right now, we just care about Gunthak.   Zoning breaks illusions. When you illusion a pet, it maximizes its size when it wears off. This is the largest the tiger model can grow. It's loving huge and hilarious.  I start fighting my way back out, then decide a little later to just, not. We invis up and head for where we really care about.  Well, sort of. We find a named that drops caster gear. We kill it.  Goodbye worthless dusty burlap gloves, hello new hotness.  We finally reach the fort inside the tunnels of Gunthak. Here, we can find the injured warder and Alina's emblem needed for two of the quests we're solving today.  Pirates give no shits. They'll use shivs, boarding axes, and broken bottles as weapons.  I dig on the Erudite model, but did they have to give the only loving dark-skinned race a goddamned stripper g-string with low-rise pants that show off their butts and the fact that it is, in fact, a g-string?  This is one of the nearby spawn points for the lost and captured warder. Any time you see a bottle on the ground in this fort area, clearing everything around it will eventually have the beastlord's warder spawn.  This is the one piece of the Cleric's level 52 spell we can acquire right now.  And this is a nice earring for Gyyi.  There's a number of interesting drops in Gunthak, almost all of it useful.  A better shot of one of those bottles. There's six of them, I think, in the fort area, and the injured wolf can spawn at certain points around them. No lie, this took me an entire night of play of clearing these spawns before it spawned. I finally gave up, started logging out for 30 minutes to depop the zone, then logging back in and checking all of its spawn points before I found it.  We find this emblem during the clear, though, which is Kedrustorii's needed item.  I get bored and do Stupid Chanter poo poo. I lull everything around the entrance of the fort, and inside, and pull the named mob in the center out through them. You can do some truly stupid things as an Enchanter or a Bard because of the power of your toolkit.  I may have to start a Monk alt to use these. 10/21 is a pretty nice ratio.  We also find Hatethorn spawning again nearby, so we kill it and find its other nice caster drop. Score. Now Gyyi can stop wearing a Petrified Erudite Heart Amulet and feeling disgusted.  Finally, after far too long and reaching level 47 off light blues and greens, an injured wolf spawns.   We go to make the turn-in, and also give the Deepwater Emblem to Millius.       Ahh, Bond of the Wild. It's a slightly less than great pet haste, but it also gives the Beastlord an extra ~100hp, and both buffs last for an hour, compared to the level 39 pet haste that currently only lasts about 11 minutes. It'll eventually be useless, but having it at 52 is nice. What more do you wish to draw for me? Is this a cave system? Right. I'll go find more of the black powder. Back on the beach, we start killing savage skeletal sailors, which are the placeholders for Alina's ghost.  Thankfully, this is a much faster process than trying to get the injured wolf to spawn.    You know, at 550 mana, it's nearly the same cost as Blessing of Temperance's 1650 mana to buff all 3 of us, and BoT only has a 12 sec casting time; buffing the three of us would take 27 seconds. I'll stick with Blessing, but having single-target Temp will be nice if I want to buff lowbies.    We head back through the tunnels to Dulak's Harbor. This is a pirate harbor; there are five ships with crews to fight, but we won't be doing that today. Today, we want that structure on the left in the last image.   Up the ladder we go.    Appropriately, this platform is used to roll ore along and then slide it down the ramp into other ore carts to be carted off, and leads directly into Torgiran Mines.  In Torgiran Mines, we find miners...  And bruisers, which drop the powder we're after. This is the relatively low level area of the mines; the rest of it is 49+.  Also featured in the mines are these cute little guys. They can't be targeted, and endlessly drive their picks into nearby stone.  The Broken Skull Clan doesn't give a gently caress, they'll enslave anyone and everyone.  You'll also find the adorable guys in cages, rattling them around to make them spin as they try to break free. I really wish I could do something, but I'm glad they're untargetable, because then I'd have to kill them. The miners in here, aside from resistance miners, want to murder us, because they're delirious and crazed from hunger, thirst and exhaustion and can't recognize friend from foe. There's also subverted miners, those who believe in the cause, probably because they were very susceptible to any propaganda from being hungry, thirsty and exhausted.  More trader fuel, but yeah, Legacy of Ykesha was when EverQuest really started to add some nice, easily-attainable gear drops for lower level characters.   We're only in here for about an hour before it drops. Much, much faster than trying to get the injured wolf to spawn, or Alina for that matter.    A much-needed disease-based dot for the Beastlord, as we haven't had a new one since level 9. And that's all we can do in Legacy of Ykesha for the moment, since I don't want Leviathan Eyes. We'll be back around 54 during our AA grinding to churn out the level 52 spells.  Back on the boat, we take the book up in the prow back to Knowledge, and call it a day. Next time: the march to 50+. RelentlessImp fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Jul 30, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2022 09:56
|
|
|
Today we're going to talk about focus effects. See, in the original EverQuest, there was a weird balance between melee characters and spellcasters. Melee weapon damage ratios weren't anything stellar as of yet - the best ratios were around 0.45-0.52 - and spellcasters didn't have oodles and oodles of mana or mana regen. Damage values over the average duration of a fight skewed towards casters and their ability to pump out hundreds of damage in a few seconds, but longer fights where casters ran the risk of running Out Of Mana (OOM) the melee's sustained damage was king, and thus were things sort of balanced. Then came Kunark, and a raising of level cap, skill caps, and everything else. Epics came, better haste items were discovered (in classic, the best was 36% for most, 40% for monks, while now 41% was available for every class). Casters, having long been stymied by high resists on raids, began to see a lowering of resists, but now fights were longer. 32,000HP was the cap any mob could have in this time period, due to the original coding for EverQuest assigning a short integer (16 bits of data) to handle HP, and any number of raid mobs started to approach it. But it wasn't until Velious where the caster-melee disparity really, truly took off. Suddenly, you began to see weapons with 0.6-1.0 or better ratios, and the game began to become top-heavy, as more and more players reached level cap and began to enter the raiding scene, and now there were enough top-level raid targets to host a fairly robust raid scene per server. Casters were falling behind, and melee were dominating the game. Velious was also the time the move was made from short integers to long (32-bit) integers, as well, allowing for obscene amounts of HP over 32,000 on NPCs. (After Ring of Scale, Expansion #24, they moved to 64-bit integers, as they started to run up against the 32-bit cap.) These larger HP totals on raid targets saw casters running OOM earlier and earlier into the fights, while melee could continue doling out their massively improved damage. Two solutions were put into place come Shadows of Luclin. The first were Alternate Advancement abilities - intended to be a longevity measure, as no longer was simply leveling to cap and acquiring gear your only things to do, now you had to grind more experience to acquire new abilities or improve old ones. Some of these were proliferation of abilities - the ability to score melee or spell critical hits, once reserved for the Warrior and Wizard respectively - some were passive, such as Combat Agility and Combat Stability, which improved Avoidance and Mitigation, and some were very unique to their classes, such as a Necromancer's Flesh to Bone AA that turned any kind of meat or body part item into bone chips to fuel their pets. A number of these were focused on improving spells - reducing aggro caused by them, increasing damage, reducing cast time, allowing spell critical damage, and the like. The second was Focus Effects. These new abilities on equipment improved spells, from making them do more damage to costing less mana to removing reagent usage to making them cast faster. They were spread throughout the world, not just on Luclin gear, but they actually went back and added focus effects onto gear from Classic, Kunark and Velious. For instance, the White Dragonscale Cloak was once a very nice, very expensive to quest, caster and priest back item, with its 10AC +9 WIS +9 INT +75HP and +25 Save vs Cold. Once Luclin came around, it gained the focus effect Improved Damage III. On the other hand, the Robe of the Oracle, a very popular caster twink robe, both due to its really nice robe graphic and +5 INT and +25 mana, only gained Improved Damage I, despite requiring the killing of a level 34 NPC guarded by a level 40 NPC. But that wasn't quite enough, no. By late Planes of Power (primarily Elemental and Planes of Time gear) they began to add Melee Focus Effects, and becoming prolific by Gates of Discord. These pieces of gear improved melee in some way - either upping the activation chance of a defensive or offensive skill, increasing critical hit rates, and increasing damage of secondary skills like Backstab, Flying Kick, Kick, and Bash. When it comes to Spell Focus Effects, they follow a very simple pattern: I, or level 1 of a focus effect, affects spells up to level 20. II, or level 2, affects spells up to level 44. III, or level 3, affects spells up to level 60. IV, or level 4, affects spells up to level 65. And so on. Spells higher level than the focus effect would cause the focus effect to lose 5% of its effectiveness for every level above its maximum, until it stopped working. Some Focus Effects aren't a static increase. They increase parameters of spells in a percentage range, determined randomly each time the spell is cast. Yes, it's dumb. The basic Focus Effects are: Improved Damage - A 1-20% increase on direct damage spells. Improved Healing - A 1-20% increase to healing spells. Burning Affliction - A 1-20% increase to damage-over-time spells. This one would determine its percentage increase every time the DoT did damage. Spell Haste - A 20% reduction to cast times. Extended Range - A 15% increase to the maximum range you can cast a spell from. Extended Enhancement - A 15% increase to the duration of buffs. Reagent Conservation - A 15% chance to not use a reagent on a spell that requires it. Mana Preservation - A 10% decrease to mana cost. Affliction Efficiency - A 25% decrease to mana cost on detrimental spells have at least a 30 second duration. Affliction Haste - A 33% decrease to cast time on detrimental spells that have at least a 30 second duration. Like any good idea, though, this would get expanded on ruthlessly in later expansions. For instance, in Planes of Power, all Elemental Plane quested Caster and Priest gloves offer a 30% mana decrease to ONE spell - their highest-damage nuke spell at 65. Some only affect spells of certain elemental damages, and so on. The melee focus effects are not quite as varied as the spell focus effects. There's one for every aspect of melee combat - increasing critical strike chance, increasing activation rates of Parry/Block/Riposte/Dodge/Double Attack and the like. Later on, even more secondary stats were added - things like Heal Amount and Spell Damage, that did exactly what they sounded like and also mirrored Blizzard's choice to create +Healing or +Damage gear for spellcasters in World of Warcraft, but also things like Strikethrough, which gave melee characters a chance to ignore a mob's activation of Parry/Block/Riposte/Dodge and Spell Shield, which reduced damage done to them by spells that landed on them. Balance was not exactly restored between the caster/melee divide, however, just by these changes. It took time to find the right levels of these new effects and base damage for spells to make them more or less balance each other out. Which I have Opinions™ on, namely that EverQuest shouldn't be "balanced" given it's still, even in its modern incarnation, quite reliant on the concept of grouping, though the proliferation of six-boxing (or more) on live EverQuest makes it more or less a moot point. Still, focus effects are extremely useful, and we'll be acquiring as many as we can as we go on. And through all of this, there was always one spell no focus effect would ever, ever work on: Complete Healing, and its Druid and Shaman equivalents. They were really regretting the inclusion of the spell by this point, and trying to move towards more active healing by late Planes of Power raids, but Complete Heal chains on the tank continued to prevail until Omens of War. RelentlessImp fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Jul 30, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 30, 2022 10:50
|
|
|
I'm really enjoying this playthrough and my only Everquest story is that I only played during the (closed? open?) Beta test, a thousand years ago. I remember dutifully creating a character of each race and running around, fighting things. Dark Elf Necromancers were the most popular, of course. Halflings were the least popular. I wasn't impressed by the game. I had been playing Ultima Online for probably about two years (and The Realm for probably four or five) by then and I had a house, a guild, friends, and a valued place in the little community we had built. Everquest had no social infrastructure that I can remember, certainly no housing, and I don't remember what the guild system was like back then, if it was in Beta at all. But Ultima Online sought to create a world to live in and Everquest sought to create a system which quantitatively rewarded your attention, which was easy to do because Everquest, and everything that came after it, provided immediate feedback, whereas Ultima Online wouldn't say poo poo while you baked hundreds of loaves of bread to get that last 0.1% of Cooking skill. Its obvious now which system proved to be more popular with players and I only wish I had stuck with Everquest and Asheron's Call longer than I did back then.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2022 13:53
|
|
|
I'm not even sure where to take this LP from here, guys. I've made it to level 54 and the update is so sparse I'm not even sure it's worth posting; we do some LDoNs, group up with another trio, and head to Veksar to do some proper dungeoning, ding 54 and stop for the night. I didn't even take all that many screenshots in Veksar since I'd gotten so used to the more "set your own" pace of LDoNs and readjusting to proper dungeons took me a bit and I forgot to hit the screenshot button regularly. You've all seen the core gameplay loop and how combat works. About the only thing I can think of at this point is posting the update and making the next one a long (hour-ish?) video update showing off keying for Sebilis and Howling Stones and taking you guys on a tour of a couple of dungeons, mainly a highlight reel of some of my favorites; Sebilis, Howling Stones, Chardok, Grieg's End, Lower Guk, SolB, Acrylia Caverns... maybe throw in some Plane of Mischief to show you how batshit designers were back in the day because that zone is a giant pile of madness. But then I'd have to learn to do video editing, which would push that update back by like, a week, maybe two. Though I guess I'd have an excuse to do a full-length, unedited video showcasing the leveling process then. RelentlessImp fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Aug 5, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2022 07:35
|
|
|
Let's talk about Alternate Advancement abilities. Introduced in Shadows of Luclin, Alternate Advancement is a secondary way to progress your character, initially designed to be performed once you had hit the current level cap. You gain Alternate Advancement points the way you gain levels - by killing things and accruing experience. The amount of experience required to gain 1 Alternate Advancement Point is the same as it takes to go from level 51 to level 52, repeated endlessly. At higher levels, this takes less and less time as you fight higher and higher level enemies that give commensurately more experience per kill. To gain Alternate Advancement points, one has to set a percentage of experience gain to go towards Alternate Advancement abilities in the AA window or by using the /alt # slash command to quickly set a percentage. At 100%, you no longer gain regular experience, only alternate advancement experience. Alternate Advancement abilities run the gamut from situational to class-defining. Rangers, for instance, completely changed the manner in which they played after reaching level 60 and acquiring a minimum of 39 Alternate Advancement points to acquire the Endless Quiver (makes it so you don't use up the arrow in your ammo slot when firing a bow) and the Archery Mastery (+30/60/100% archery damage, which stacked with their innate double damage on bow shots on immobile, non-rooted targets) AAs, turning them from melee hybrids into mostly-ranged hybrids. They would return to melee hybrids by late Elemental Planes in Planes of Power, switching only to their bows during burn phases with their Trueshot Discipline (+105% bow damage, again, stacking with everything else). Perhaps no Alternate Advancement changed the game more than the Mass Group Buff ability. Acquired by every class that could cast spells, this turned any Group buffs into wide-area group buffs that hit every player within range for a cost of doubling mana. This included things like Heal-Over-Time spells and the Beastlord's Paragon of Spirit AA (massive HP/Mana regen over 30 seconds, though Beastlords wouldn't get MGB until just before Lost Dungeons of Norrath), but more importantly, included high-end, long-duration group buffs such as Aegolism and Koadic's Endless Intellect. Here we see Verant's stance against twinking at play once again; originally, you couldn't land these high-end buffs on players under a certain level (at level 46, you could receive level 60 buffs), but you could bypass this by grouping with people and having them cast the group versions on themselves, thereby hitting the entire group; thus even level 1 characters could receive +1100 hitpoints via Blessing of Aegolism. Mass Group Buff extended this immensely, allowing players to land high-end buffs on hundreds of people at once. This became a common occurrence of groups of people getting together and Mass Group Buffing dozens or hundreds of people at once with their high-level buffs - you can still see this in play on The Al`Kabor Project, where MGBs typically go off multiple times a day. This was, eventually, nerfed so that group-cast spells and mass group buff-cast spells no longer affected people under the level requirement needed some time in Legacy of Ykesha, if I remember correctly. But back to the Alternate Advancement abilities themselves. This was, clearly, an early skinner box method to keep people playing and paying their subscription fee longer, but they were also direct power upgrades. Alternate Advancement Abilities were originally divided into General, Archetype and Class typings. You needed to spend 6 points in General and achieve level 55 before you could purchase Archetype abilities, and you needed to spend 12 points in Archetype and reach level 59 before you could purchase Class abilities. Almost all General abilities required 1 AA Point per rank. Most Archetype abilities went 2/4/6 for their ranks, some like Ambidexterity had only a single rank and cost more, and the cost of Class abilities followed a pattern of 3/6/9, or had unique costs. Dire Charm, for instance - a permanent duration Charm on a long cooldown that only functions on level 46 or lower targets, on only animals for Druids or undead for Necromancers - cost 9 points, while Elemental Pact - the ability for Magicians to no longer expend Malachite when summoning pets and thus only needing to carry 1 instead of a bag full - cost 5. Every expansion after Shadows of Luclin would go on to expand the Alternate Advancement list, originally gaining their own tabs on the Alternate Advancement window for which expansion they belonged to, but then being once again collapsed down into just the General, Archetype, and Class categories, now with level-gating commensurate with what expansion they came from. The straight usefulness of Alternate Advancement abilities is not to be dismissed; archetype abilities like Combat Stability - an increase to mitigation - Combat Agility - avoidance - and Natural Durability - base hitpoints, including those derived from stamina - are some of the greatest survivability gains you can get with your AA points, and they're available to everyone. A decked out Warrior with full AAs can turn 1100 damage hits into roughly 600-800 damage hits in late Planes of Power, and that's before Defensive Discipline comes into play. Offensive AAs have nearly as big an effect on combat effectiveness, as well; simply getting a single rank of Combat Fury (melee crits) or Spell Casting Fury (spell damage crits) can up a character's DPS immensely, as criticals are straight doubling of damage when they occur. Things like Mental Clarity increase mana regen and fully stack with item-gained or spell-gained mana regen. Paladins and Shadow Knights received "free" mounts in Holy/Unholy Steed, which helped to increase their mana longevity in experience groups and on raids. But even beyond Mass Group Buff - which endures to this day - there was one very important AA that would teach Verant, once again, the value of thinking things through. Available only to Wizards, the AA Manaburn took every last ounce of mana available to the Wizard and turned it directly into damage in a range of 1.5x-2.0x their current mana value. It was completely unresistable. Now, in Luclin, mana pools were achieving numbers of roughly 6000-8000 depending on gearing level, and while the HP cap of 32,000 had been lifted way back in Kunark, there were still a lot of raid targets out there with HP values low enough that an aspiring group of wizards could simply chain their Manaburns together and effectively destroy these raid bosses in a matter of moments. And that's exactly what happened. Enterprising Wizards, maligned for their lack of utility on raids and, by now, falling relevance in damage given longer and longer fights, grouped together and began to take out raid targets in massive Manaburn chains and selling loot rights to things like items needed for epic quests or just really nice pieces of gear. They didn't get away with it for very long, however; the patch cycle caught up with them quickly, and Manaburn was made to cause a debuff on the target that prevented subsequent Manaburns from landing on the target. Necromancers received a similar ability in Lifeburn, which converted their HP into damage with a 1:1 conversion rate, but also affected them with a Leach-type spell to restore their HP, but dropping them to very low HP meant they needed to feign death immediately or receive "blood aggro" - I'll cover that later in another mechanics post. Rampage - a Warrior-only AA that caused you to attack everything with a single melee attack - also caused issues. See, there was an almost-classic 2h Sword called Earthshaker that procced a spell called Earthquake - a Cleric/Druid PBAOE spell that dealt around 240 damage. However, it was found that if you gathered enough mobs - say, an entire zone - and herded them into a corner on a Divine Aura'd Paladin or Cleric, let them group up, and then sent in a Warrior with Earthshaker to hit the Rampage button, and have them Slowed by a Shaman (usually via Torpor, to increase the Proc-Per-Minute chance - more on that in another post) they could literally proc Earthshaker several dozen or hundred times in the same instant, as each hit of Rampage counted as its own attack and thus had a proc chance, slaughtering entire zones full of mobs in a single button press. One could acquire hundreds of AAs a night doing this. Procs were patched to no longer go off on a Rampage within a month of this discovery. Not only was this above Verant's intended AA exp rate, but Shakerpaging also lagged out zones, and on occasion crashed them, because of the large number of calculations needed to be made by the server in the instant the Warrior hit their Rampage button. Plus, by this point, Earthshakers no longer dropped, having been a drop in the original Hole zone that had already been revamped once by this point, making it not only obscene, but unfair to those servers opened after that point. A combination of Spell Casting Deftness (reduce cast time on spells by 25%), Quick Buff (reduce cast time on buffs by 50%), a Spell Haste focus item of around 20%, and a Cleric's Blessing of Piety line (reduce cast time by 10%) would cause buffs to cast instantly, as the reductions all stacked and reduced your cast time to less than 0 seconds; this was patched out very quickly, to the point where it was mostly known about on the old EQMac server, which was forever stuck in Planes of Power and got basically no updates after its launch but had the fortune of being forked from the primary EQ builds prior to this being patched out. (On The Al`Kabor Project, which is the continuation of the EQMac server, this is disabled on server side, and doing this setup will permanently break your cast bar for beneficial spells.) On the other side, there were AAs that simply didn't work, originally. Jam Fest, a Bard AA, was supposed to increase all level-relevant effects of their songs - but it wound up only working for beneficial songs and only on the bard themselves, not any group members who also was receiving the song. Fleet of Foot, another Bard AA, was supposed to increase the speed modifier of their run speed songs, but actually wound up slowing them down. All in all, Alternate Advancement abilities were a grab-bag of useful, awesome, class-defining, and absolutely broken to either be too powerful or in the not-working sense. As EverQuest continued on past this point, Alternate Advancement abilities have grown in number to an obscene degree; it takes around 15,000 AAs these days to get everything useful to your class at level cap, and venturing into certain expansions expects you to at least have your mitigation/avoidance AAs maxed out, as later expansion mobs have much higher accuracy and damage to account for the proliferation of AAs. As a stopgap measure in more recent years, if you're a subscriber, you automatically get all AAs up to 5 or 6 expansions back as you level, drastically cutting down on the amount of AA grinding one needs to do once one reaches the current level cap, needing to only get around 5,000 or so through grinding. Class-defining abilities were no longer just spells or disciplines, but AA abilities, and now a high-level character in EverQuest can have 30-40 AA-granted abilities cluttering up their hotbars, in addition to the hotkeys they need for disciplines and spells. RelentlessImp fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Aug 5, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2022 11:20
|
|
|
This thread is Cool, especially for someone who only got to like level 25 max in EQ classic.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2022 14:43
|
|
|
I think a dungeons greatest hits would be a good direction to go with. Also, show off that one crazy tower in Velious, with the multiple floors and each one had a sort of "puzzle" to figure out how to get to the next floor. It was really weird to just stumble across!
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2022 21:56
|
|
|
Obligatum VII posted:I think a dungeons greatest hits would be a good direction to go with. Ah yeah, the Tower of Frozen Shadow. We're about the right level that, if we're careful, we can conquer the top floor except for Tserinna Syl`Tor. It's a great place to level for quite a long time if you're not doing LDoNs, except any corpse recovery is an absolute bitch.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2022 22:16
|
|
|
If nothing else I'm really enjoying reading about the history of Everquest and how the game evolved over time! If you need actual gameplay stuff to showcase alongside the history and lore tidbits, maybe some sort of class showcase at some point to show how the playstyles may differ? Totally wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to raise up a whole 'nother gaggle of adventurers for that, though!
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2022 23:07
|
|
|
IthilionTheBrave posted:If nothing else I'm really enjoying reading about the history of Everquest and how the game evolved over time! If you need actual gameplay stuff to showcase alongside the history and lore tidbits, maybe some sort of class showcase at some point to show how the playstyles may differ? Totally wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to raise up a whole 'nother gaggle of adventurers for that, though! No, I haven't been secretly funneling some of the platinum gained into making a second trio to show off more traditional twinking leveling paths, don't be ridiculous. I totally don't have an Iksar Warrior/Shaman/Necromancer trio waiting for a few more pieces of bazaar-bought gear on the Warrior before I do something with them, honest.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2022 23:22
|
|
|
RelentlessImp posted:No, I haven't been secretly funneling some of the platinum gained into making a second trio to show off more traditional twinking leveling paths, don't be ridiculous. I totally don't have an Iksar Warrior/Shaman/Necromancer trio waiting for a few more pieces of bazaar-bought gear on the Warrior before I do something with them, honest. Lizard gang...
|
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2022 04:14
|
|
|
 We start today running some Mistmoore Catacombs, getting something besides the damned caves. This configuration is more dangerous, though.  Shortly after the entrance we find a boss mob.  It doesn't go well the first time.   A fun drop, though, this is nearly as good as our Stave of Shielding on our BST and has much better stats. We'll stick with the 17/28 though.   These rooms can be a death sentence without pacifying.  We hit 49 pretty quick, and ... our Beastlord's level 49 pet starts out light blue. We get some fun spells to make up for it, though.   105hp and +10 ATK, Spiritual Brawn is the first in a new line for the Beastlord. Useful for an attack boost. Frenzy is a self-only buff, upgrading the earlier Frenzy line, that increases AC by 35, AGI by 25, STR by 28 and DEX by 25, making it a very useful spell. However, it disables all spellcasting for 30 seconds after casting it, meaning casting it in the middle of a fight to rebuff isn't a great idea.  Level 49 also gets us a new nuke for the Beastlord, a welcome upgrade in damage.  Allure upgrades our Charm to affecting level 51 mobs. Yes, Enchanters could charm things higher than the level cap back in classic.  Swift like the Wind is a great upgrade to haste, at 60% haste and a decent duration.  Resurrection is our 90% exp restoration rez, negating most exp loss from a death.  Vampire "commoners" hold weapons backwards in their main hand. It's a fun graphic to look at.   Another named, another item to throw on the trader. Warrior-only weapons are a tradition from Classic's Plane of Sky and Fear, with Blood Fire (11/24, 67 damage-per-tick high-aggro DoT proc) and Dagas (11/21), with good ratios or heavy procs that help them to generate aggro. From Luclin onwards, there was always a Warrior-only weapon or three for this purpose. In LDoN, they start showing up at lower levels; Guard II reduces melee damage by 5%, up to 100 damage reduced, and generates a decent amount of aggro when it procs on the warrior.    Not all items are great. Still, resistance items can be useful if you're a bit short.  We hit 51 pretty quickly.  Adventures are taking longer and longer. Also, with our Charm capping at 51, we need to be careful as we dungeon, as the average level raising means we'll start to run out of things to charm at 52, until we hit 53 and get Boltran's Agacerie. But here's why we were doing Mistmoore Catacombs today:   Spirit of Shrew and Pack Shrew were introduced in LDoN, and are movement speed increasing spells like Spirit of Wolf. They give about the same movement speed increase as Journeyman's Boots, but most importantly, can be cast indoors. They also give Ultravision. And yes, in old EQ, certain spells were limited to being cast "outdoors" only. We grab the group version because, well, we're a group. I also go and do some Deepest Guk in an attempt to get the single-target version, but it starts kicking my rear end.  Level 51 brings us our first pet proc buff that has a stun component.  It also brings us Wake of Tranquility. Pacifying spells are extremely useful, and Wake of Tranquility is the first area-of-effect version that Clerics and Enchanters get access to. Druids have long had area effect versions in the Harmony line, but they were restricted by being castable outdoors only.  And also, Theft of Thought. I love Theft of Thought. It steals 400 mana - or if they have less, all their mana - from the target and gives it to the Enchanter. Enchanters are very mana-intensive classes at times, and being able to get 400 mana every 2 minutes, more or less, really helps their longevity.  51 also brings us our first Kunark heal. As you can see, not all of these spells are direct upgrades; but Remedy costs 175 mana vs Superior Healing's 250, and heals 438 vs Superior Healing's ~600. Much more mana-efficient heal at 2.5 mana per HP vs Superior Healing's 2.4.  I also finally pick up this spell that I haven't been touching because of the mana cost involved. There's an earlier version, Blessing of Piety, that only affects spells up to level 39. This is a flat 10% reduction to cast times, which is very useful, and it stacks with focus effects and AAs. There's an upgrade in PoP at level 62 that affects up to level 65 spells, and another in Omens of War at 67 that affects up to level 70 spells.  I forgot that it was the South Ro camp I needed to do and thought it was Miragul's Menagerie. This is a holgresh, though, a mob type introduced in Scars of Velious. Holgresh are flying monkeys that are all magicians or wizards. Fly, my pretties!  Abominations show up, too. Straight out of Lovecraftian mythos, or at least, the Lovecraftian mythos that spawned out of what came after Lovecraft himself died.  Something else level 51 brings is a change of class name. In Ruins of Kunark, people were surprised to discover that their class name changed in their class window and /who results as they leveled towards 60. Kella is a Primalist now, Kedrustorii is a Vicar, and Gyyi is an Illusionist. This trend would continue in future expansions, until level 75 in The Serpent's Spine. Here's a screenshot of a table available on Allakhazam here to show you all the titles and what level they're obtained at:  For now, we'll be capping at Feral Lord, Archon, and Coercer.  Level 52 brings us our first post-50 pet heal, and like Remedy, it's a slight downgrade but costs less mana and casts faster.  And an upgrade to our HP/Mana regen spell, a mere 8 levels after we got the first one. We'll be getting a third at level 59.  Well this is a lot of fuckery. Enchanter locks things down, Beastlord and pets beat them to death. Witness of Hate knaves are great for charming in this dungeon - they backstab for nearly 400 damage at this level and really speed up kills.  A very good room for Wake of Tranquility.  I had a wipe in this dungeon, which slowed me down enough that we wind up failing this dungeon. In the middle of killing the final mob.  Failing an LDoN but completing it within the 15 minute grace period gives you about 40% of the LDoN points for a win, but doesn't progress your story progress to acquire Adventurer's Stone upgrades. Discouraged, I go back to Rujarkian Hills to make myself feel better.  Yoink, right onto a piece of Kella's gear. Free ATK boosts are always welcome.  Level 53 comes pretty quickly, getting us some useful things. Boltran's Agacerie, of course, our charm upgrade that lets us charm up to level 53 NPCs, and the primary reason I was going to stop at 54 to grind, since "average level" on LDoNs spawns mostly enemies of that level, but some mobs one level under that, and named mobs one to two levels above that, meaning we'd keep our ability to charm while we ground AAs in LDoNs. Also I promise that Screenshot 53 showing us dinging 53 was complete coincidence.  We find this on the Rujarkian Vendor. 20 AC on our Enchanter's beat-upon rear end? Yes, please. Plus more HP from the huge Stamina increase!  I find someone wanting to group in my level range, so I invite them on our next Rujarkian adventure. They run a Warrior, Cleric, Magician trio, and we head out to Rujarkian Hills. The Warrior is 47 and the Cleric and Mage are 51 at this point, and we are level 53. We run into a problem, though. See, EverQuest doesn't let you just group willy-nilly. Typically, you have a level range in which you can group; this is usually calculated by (level*1.5) in this era - a level 44 could group with anyone in this era, since their cap is 66, but a level 40 could only group up to level 60s. LDoNs make this a much smaller range; we discover that the 6 levels between this person's Warrior and our levels means he can't enter the LDoNs. So we decide to head to an actual dungeon. As an aside, 9 levels is the cap on LDoNs right now, with level 56s being able to go in with 65s.  Welcome to Veksar, a dungeon introduced in the May 13, 2003 patch, only two weeks after Legacy of Ykesha launched. Originally only available on Stormhammer, the Legends server - I'll be making a post about that right after this - it was released to other servers on the June 11, 2003 patch. Located in Kunark in the Lake of Ill Omen, it's a dungeon full of goblins, undead, and golems. I, unfortunately, didn't get much in the way of screenshots here.   Suffice to say we find our way to the golems, which are level 54, and begin grinding them out. Turns out our kill speed is enough to clear all the golems and a few undead in this area, and we do that until we hit level 54, the Warrior hits 49, and his other two characters hit 53.  Level 54 brings us our first mez that affects creatures above level 55. All pre-Kunark mezzes affect to level 55, and Glamour of Kintaz up to 57. We'll get an upgrade at level 59, which is unresistable and affects up to level 61, but has a long-ish (~20 seconds) recast. Rapture, as it's called, is a very, very useful spell, but only allows you to keep two mobs locked down at most. Kella's level 54 Beastlord pet also starts out light blue. Sigh. Next time: A video update! Gasp!
|
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2022 22:45
|
|
|
Let's talk about Stormhammer, the Legends Server. EverQuest had grown far beyond Sony's expectations. In-game issues were handled via volunteers called Guides, people who went through an interview and vetting process and were then expected to handle in-game petitions, and GMs (Game Masters), who were actual paid employees of Sony. Each Guide and GM had a specific server they called home and resolved the issues on, but as the playerbase grew and grew, they found they didn't have enough Guides or GMs in order to facilitate handling of issues. As such, petitions began to take longer and longer, and more people began to leave the volunteer service, exacerbating problems. I remember in 2002, I had a petition take three days to be resolved, but knowing what I know now (I was, for a brief period of time, a Guide shortly after this), I'm surprised it wasn't a week. People who began to quit the game started to cite "lack of support" as an issue, and seeing this, Verant decided to open a new server unlike any ever seen before. This server was Stormhammer. Launched on February 12, 2002, with an ad campaign a few months in advance, Stormhammer promised 24/7 GM support and had a dedicated team of GMs and Guides on that server. Stormhammer also had unique content and increased drop rates of items, and received revamped dungeons and new dungeons earlier than all other servers. Its unique zone was Marauder's Mire, a carbon copy of Erud's Crossing but with unique mob placement, and GMs frequently ran scripted events in that zone that rewarded unique loot. They also added "adventure zones", which were repurposed zones with unique mob placement with unique quests involved with them; very little about them remains documented, as Stormhammer didn't have a huge player base. Stormhammer had a cost associated with it, though. To fund its 24/7 GMs, people who wanted to play on Stormhammer had to pay an increased subscription cost; EverQuest, at this time, had just recently moved from $9.99/month to $12.99/month, and Stormhammer cost $20-$25 (I forget precisely the number) a month to play on. Stormhammer was widely considered as a joke among the playerbase. Pay more money for the exact same game but with the support they should already be receiving? It was not well-received. However, everyone I know who played on Stormhammer say that they had a blast playing on it, and it fostered a community nearly as unique as Firiona Vie, the roleplaying server, had. Stormhammer did not prove to be a success. Low population numbers and a continued waning GM staff led to it being shuttered in February 2006, with all players receiving free character transfers to any server of their choice. Even now, there still remains a piece or two of unique gear from Stormhammer scattered across every server, forgotten to time. RelentlessImp fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Aug 6, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 6, 2022 23:03
|
|
|
So for my video update, I'd love to get someone to co-commentate; preferably someone unfamiliar, but interested in, EverQuest.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2022 00:23
|
|
|
Let's talk about EverQuest's Tutorial, because it's cute. No, not the Mines of Gloomingdeep; that came in 2005. The original EverQuest tutorial was an entirely separate .exe file from the one used to launch the game. It started you as a Human Cleric (without a deity) named Soandso in a unique zone that walked you through the basics, teaching you how to move, interact, perform the basic quest functions (acquire item, give to an NPC), how to use the chat system to go through quest text, how to buy from and sell to merchants, how to use banks, how to convert currency (it involved being in the bank window), how to autoattack (originally placed on the A button, which let me tell you, caused a LOT of problems for people who were trying to do quests and missed the enter key to open the chat box), how to loot, and how to zone - the final task in the tutorial is leaping into a hole and going through a zone line that closes the .exe. Unfortunately, the tutorial can no longer be completed on modern machines, if you even have access to the file. I believe it has something to do with needing much, much older DirectX 6 or 7 runtimes with depreciated functions, as the tutorial typically crashes when you finish scribing the tutorial-given spell into your spellbook. It was very cute, very 90s, and as I was a teenager with very lovely dial-up back then, I played through it probably 20 or 30 times while waiting for the initial patching to finish before I booted the game up. I'd occasionally go back to it when servers were down just to get an EQ fix; I was a hopeless addict. However, some enterprising individual on Youtube has managed to record a full playthrough of the Tutorial. You can see it here. The tutorial zone still exists in the game files, and can be reached via GM Commands, but it is entirely unpopulated. I did once see an emulator server utilize it as the game hub, however, though the name of it escapes me now. The gravestones in the Tutorial, however, are almost all send-ups to the original developers involved with 989 Studios, utilizing their call names or nicknames. Aradune, perhaps, is the most recognizable, that being the in-game character of Brad McQuaid. The others have had their names utilized in some way or another in EverQuest as further remembrances; Fixx's epitaph was made relevant in Plane of Sky, as on one island you must ask an NPC "Am I one with the wall?", except you must ask it as "?llaw eht htiw eno I mA" because Sirran the Lunatic is batshit insane. Mixxy, Binelen, and Xectia have cookbooks. Ssra was made into an almost-expansion-ending raidboss in the form of Emperor Ssraeshza, and the zone you encounter him in, Ssraeshza Temple. Vashaar is trickier to track down; "Vaashar" has two cookbooks in game, and may simply be a different spelling. For a little more history, while doing research to make sure my memory matched up, I ran across this, which is a datamined Beta 3 disc for EverQuest, mailed out to people in 1998. A lot of very interesting information can be gleaned from this document, all of it from 989 Studios. The only things I know for certain that ended up in the final product from that beta are the title screen artworks for the game. The patch notes are fun to read through; Beta 3 seems to have begun on 08/05/1998, Ogres and Trolls didn't have Feerrott, Innothule, Grobb and Oggok until 08/22, and the entire continent of Faydwer was quickly released following the 9/15 patch. The funniest one I find is the 07/13 patch notes, though: quote:Be careful! NPCs now use their skills properly if they have them, so you might just get kicked or bashed. Only humanoid type NPCs (like Gnolls) use skills. That didn't make it to launch. I remember snakes kicking and bashing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2022 11:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 5, 2024 08:26 |
|
|
Speaking of Snakes, that last part reminds me of an issue that showed up in Arma 3 a while back where the ambient environment snakes could open doors. It caused some brief confusion before getting patched out relatively quickly.
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2022 11:54
|
|