Uncle Matty’s Blog

First of all - apologies for the lack of writing. You know what it’s like… Still, I’m resolved to updating this after every Monday night Squad session… as long as I can be bothered.

Tonight saw Squadleader, Jezrax , Squodnobbier and Squadnote continue on with the Qeynos Claymore timeline in the Sanctum of the Scaleborn. We started off getting Nobbi up to speed with Soul Survivor, which had us back to the Chamber of Animation, killing things, and having him dip his quill a couple of times.

Unfortunately, at this point it was getting on a bit, and we only had a few minutes left. So we decided - before the obligatory End of Session Death (this time, to be fair, self-inflicted) - to just head down past The Oratorium and hail Gribbly the Gallant.

And that, is about it!

Looting rules document now available!

EverQuest II certainly has its detractors, and many of the points they make may well ring true, but one of the things that consistently amazes me about the game is not only the sheer amount of content that’s more than enough for such a casual gamer as myself, but the fact that so much of the first generation stuff looks so good and plays so well. This was once again brought home to me during this last session when we entered the Obelisk of Lost Souls to pick up runes for the To Speak as a Dragon quest.

We’d agreed to collect most of these during ‘extra curricular’ sessions, but as this particular dungeon needed a series of quests to unlock it enough to gain access to the lower levels, we decided to group up and mentor down to one of my alts, Phar, to at least get a little XP and AA points from it (with me, of course, benefitting the most!). It means Squadleader will have to go through the pain of soloing it to get the runes, but that’s a small price to pay to make the Monday night session interesting.

So it was that Phar, Squadnote, Florance, Jezrax and Sqodnobbier met up in the Commlands and dispatched the shadowed men to reveal the purple-misted entrance.

We zoned in to the cavern outside the obelisk itself, and quickly got rid of most of the Soul Harvesters that we needed to gain access; apart from one bastard that we sat around camping for ages… Still, mobs were in plentiful supply and Note and Florance kept us busy by multi-pulling to keep the XP and loot up while we waited.

Once inside, it was a classic old-skool dungeon crawl, made a lot better by the fact that those of us who knew the quests or had EQ2i up in our in-game browsers were keeping schtum (up to a point) to make it much more an exploration and less a walk-through. Good stuff, and something that hopefully we’ll continue to do on Monday night sessions.

We eventually picked up the rune on the first floor and got the quest to access the lower dungeons, and so it was off to hunt and camp the names.

All-in-all a really fun sesh, and all of us are very much looking forward to returning there next Monday to carry on where we left off…

It was all about catch-up this week, with Florance and Jezrax needing to get up-to-speed on To Speak as a Dragon.

As Leader had been there before, I brought Humphrey (my level 50 Necro, and old guild leader) to the party, but seeing as he’d never been to Solusek’s Eye before, me and Jezrax started off by going the long way round Lavastorm while waiting for the others to join us. It was going so well… until about three-quarters of the way around when a party wipe made me think ’sod it,’ and get going with Squadleader now that the rest of group (Florance and Squodnobbier) had turned up.

As for the rest of the session, it went pretty well. Despite a tired Womble, and a couple of deaths, we made it to Nagafen with no hassles, and I’m glad to say that all of our mains are at the gathering runes stage of the quest now.

With no Nik this evening to join us to re-do To Speak as a Dragon, we kicked off the Swords of Destiny timeline with Leader, Thrudd (!), Note, Flo and Nobbi.

A pretty straightforward, but ultimately frustrating, session, we started off in the Commonlands to dispatch several Phantasms of Odox, which easily fell to our assaults.

Then it was off, via the sewers of Qeynos, to Kelethin - home to many of us - to hunt around for several ‘rhymposts.’ To say that some of our contingent were frustrated by this part of the quest is an understatement, but thanks to everybody’s patience we finally got there, and then it was off to click on a few beehive and chess (!) related items to get the next part of the quest in Steamfont.

Again, another rather frustrating (if you didn’t spoiler it…) conversation with Inspector Berlok Beeglesnoop to lead on to the next stage, and… that was it for the night!

This week we decided to go back to the Speak as a Dragon quest - firstly to do something different and try and keep all three quest lines going simultaneously; and secondly as we realised that we’d accidently picked the epic instance last time we tried this, and this was completely unnecessary!

Jezrax couldn’t make it this week, and Florance cried off early, so in the end Squadleader, Squadnote, Squadiwodi and Squodnobbier met up at Lavastorm beach to begin our journey toward the Maiden’s Gulch.

Wodi hadn’t been able to join us the last time we tried this, so we popped by Sebir the Historian first, and then made our way to the entrance.

This time, now we’d realised which instance to pick, we dispatched the drakota with ease, and hailed the Sage of Ages to pick up the actual quest.

And so it was back to Solusek’s Eye - that rather pretty dungeon that we’d spent a while in before trawling along it’s semi-transparent walkways but somehow never managing quite to fall off. The last time we’d been there, we were a little lower in level and finally managed to make it to the ‘end’ and the Oratorium of Thyr and all got very annoyed that you needed a quest to get inside. This time, however, we had the quest! So it was very exciting to enter and easily dispatch what was waiting inside.

And then it was on to defeat the Flamelord. Throughout our journey in the Eye we’d been telling Wodi that he was the chosen one who should hail the Flamelord, but didn’t really tell him why… He soon found out as he was temporarily dispatched to a cage while we battled against the Flamelord (although, to be fair, we did pull him back along the ledge a bit to allow him to nuke with impunity).

And then… And then we found ourselves outside Nagafen’s lair…

This was great - after x years of casual playing our first encounter with a signature EQLive dragon… We sounded the gong and entered…

Although, of course, the stupid bastard was too proud to actually talk to us in Common, but - hey - I’m not going to argue if a dragon wants to be precious about how they communicate.

And so, it was back to Antonica to talk with the Sage again and find out that we needed a hell of a lot of runes…

Back to the Sanctum of the Scaleborn this week to carry on our hunt for the Qeynos Claymore.

After a while waiting for people to join, it settled down to five of us this week: Leader, Note, Ash, Florance and Nobbi. When we all turned up we grouped back at the entrance and made our way up the stairs.

This week, we were far more organised collecting the scrolls for those of us that still needed them, with Note helpfully knocking the idols off the ledge in order and us taking a more disciplined approach to clearing the mobs out of the way while people collecting the rewards. Good stuff, and very usual for the Squad: the second visit to a quest or a dungeon results in the same amount of work being done in (at least) half the time.

It was then back to talk to The Shade of Bylze to talk to him for a little longer about what he was doing there, and then off to retrieve various armour pieces from the silent sentinels.

This was soon done, with plenty of mobs in the room that spawned quickly, and so it was back to the Shade to finish off this part of the quest and on to find the Apparition Chest. This led us out of the main chamber into one of the side-halls, where the mobs were a lot tougher and so it was time for Leader to unmentor and show his worth a little more.

While examining the chest, Flo noticed another quest triggered by examing the floor, and this led us on an easy side-jaunt for some XP and, importantly for Leader, some really nice level-specific gear.

Then it was off to the Ready Room to kill Awakened Spiritualists, but despite heroic fights on the way in, we eventually got wiped due to an accidental multiple-pull by Leader, and by that time a few people had to head off for the night. Despite this, we were all really pleased with the progress we’d made, although we were noticing that it was getting tough for the lower-level members of the group, so next week it’s back to learning how to speak dragon…

After last week’s start, it was time to continue our hunt for the Qeynos Claymore. This time, we had a full house, with Leader, Ashborn, Wodi, Florance, Note and Nobbi all on.

We started by playing catch-up on Burglars Afoot to all of us to get to the same point where we had gathered loot from the three corpses around the Tangle. Then, it was on to answer the questions in the card puzzle (I have to hold my hand up here and admit I cheated with spoilers…), and to make our way to the plank on the Breeding Grounds island.

It was an impressively-treacherous plank, to be sure, and to add insult to injury when I was right at the end inspect the note, Drippy appeared and knocked me right off the island with his ‘nasty knockback spell.’ Thankfully, I had enough time to scoot back to the island before the fifteen minute timer expired, and managed to spawn him again, kill him (staying safely island-ward of him this time…) and bing the quest update.

We then all headed over the valley to the chest to complete the quest. Job done.

There then followed what seemed like an inordinate amount of time with us all speaking in Druzaic to warn Wodi that he didn’t know the language… but he didn’t pick up on it so we entered in to the Sanctum of the Scaleborn to get the next part of the quest (which, of course, required him to speak the lingo…). The rest of the session was then all about the scrolls, with plenty of disorganised fighting and grabbing as you’d expect with the SDS; and - to be fair - the odd amount of good work and co-operation (again, as you’d expect). We ended the night with two or three of us scrolled-up, and the others needing them all…

…roll on next Monday!

Last Monday it was time for us to start the Qeynos Claymore timeline - one of the four major quest arcs as listed on EQ2i. We were two men down that evening, but Leader, Nobbi, Note and Wodi turned up to kick this off.

First it was off the North Qeynos to meet up with Highkeep to get the quest starter and uncover some of the lore surrounding the quest.

This was going very well until Nobbi belled in to NQ and promptly went AFK for ages. It got so bad that at one point we all trampled over to the zone-in point to stare him out good-and-proper. With plenty of dicking around taking showers underneath the small waterfall he eventually turned up and we got to work.

This was my first ever visit to The Overrealm (bar zoning in when Kingdom of Sky was first released with Humphrey, but at the time he was too low a level to do anything there). Oh. My. God. What an amazingly pretty zone.

I was particularly impressed with leaping over the waterfall to land in the Hidden Refuge pond…

…and more beautifully, the cool cloud transportation mechanism, which are like tricked-out griffons. Good stuff.

Back to matters at hand, though, and we soon picked up The Burglars Afoot quest which had us scrabbling around a couple of treehouses, the second of which we got royally owned on a couple of times, quite possibly due to me rushing in and unleashing a non-encounter AoE each time (I didn’t tell the others about that at the time, though…); and then on to the Temple of the Wurmking to kill the Herald of Dar (one time each!) and then fighting the drake mob at the top of the pyramid. (I love the fact that you have to go through each successive level of drakes before he wakes up).

After that we started on the run to gather loot from the three corpses dotted around the islands. Much to my delight this involved a lot more cloud-travelling; and less to my delight also involved a fair amount of waiting for the loot to respawn…

All-in-all, a really great session, and I’m looking forward to delving deeper into this quest in the coming weeks…

We briefly visited The Silent City last week, and - although I didn’t personally enjoy it that much - we decided to give it another crack tonight. As it happened, a quick look on EQ2i before I logged in revealed that there were a couple of quests there which we’d all benefit from later on during The Peacock Club, so I was instantly a lot more interested this time around.

Florence couldn’t make it this evening, and Wodi didn’t turn up, but Note had found a quest near the entrance, so Leader, Jez, Nobbi and Note had fun quickly running between the switch…

…and the chest it opened.

If only Nobbi had actually managed to get the chest to open, but after several attempts it still wasn’t happening for him (too low a level at 55?).

Nevertheless, we pressed on and killed the Enigma of Ice very quickly to allow us to climb the fire wall; and then farmed placeholders for what seemed like ages before we finally got lucky the Enigma of Fire popped. It was, naturally, easily dispatched by our elite fighting force, and we were able to then climb the ice wall, unlocking the last part of the zone.

Best thing about this were the hilarious recoil sentinals, which had a lol-worthy knockback if you got close to them, which had us all bouncing around upstairs, nearly bouncing off the ledge on a couple of occassions (and, sometimes, right off it). At the end of the zone were a couple of Epic x2 level 59 mobs, so we called it a night at that point and officially declared the zone ‘done’ (for the time being…).