Everquest 2, Adventure, Advancement, Sages and WoW Status

Posted by Stropp on June 17, 2009

After dipping my toes back into the world of Neo-Norrath (that’s Everquest 2) and playing a few different classes, I ended up rolling on a Templar on Lucan D’Lere and joining up with a great guild there. That happened middle of last week.

The Halasian Empire is a long established guild, and has the added advantage of having a few Aussie members. It’s nice to be able to be online with a folks from my own timezone. It’s also includes a few blogger friends, some of whom I met in the Casualties of War.

Of course, none of the characters I’d previously rolled were on LDL, so a new class was necessary, and having not played a healer for a long long time (barring a stint as a Warrior Priest in WAR) I thought I might give the classic cleric a try. My side motivation was that clerics are often sought after for groups, and I’d definitely like to do some grouping, even if it’s a majority of PUGs that I end up in.

I’m also trying a different style of play.

Normally I just rush to the level cap. Well, perhaps rush is the wrong word, but in essense I just tend to go where the levels are. But in Everquest 2, one can turn off adventure experience and quest experience in order to remain at the current adventure level. That can be pretty useful if you’re doing a static group with friends and just want to play your character while your friends are offline. That way you never outlevel them.

But this has another advantage with EQ2. You can still earn AA points by completing level 10+ quests, killing named NPCs, or by exploring new areas. Those points can then be invested into various attributes and such in order to make that character more powerful.

So by stopping and smelling the roses, and visiting every zone that caters to my level and doing the rounds there, I’ll end up with a stronger Templar when I’m grinding through the middle levels.

If I feel like I need some level advancement, I’ll simply switch the adventure XP back on.

I’m also spending more effort crafting, and this is good because crafting in Everquest 2 puts the crafting in World of Warcraft and, dare I say it, LotRO to shame. I honestly have never seen the point of a crafting system where you just feed in a bunch of mats, press a button, and go make a cup of coffee. Macro much?

I picked the Sage profession for crafting mainly because I’ll be able to create all the spells I’ll need later on up to the Adept 3 level. Although that’s changing in the latest Game Update. According to the GU52 patch notes the Apprentice 1 to 3 spells will be renamed to Apprentice, Apprentice 4 will be Journeyman, Adept 1 is Adept, Adept 3 is becoming Expert, and the Masters 1 and 2 will be called Master and Grandmaster respectively.

Unfortunately, SOE are also dumbifying (or perhaps I should say WoWifying) the spell names. Instead of a unique name for each level of a spell, they’re just going to use the same name and number them sequentially. So the healing range of spells will simply be called Healing I – IV (or whatever the max is.) It’s a real pity because it just seems SOE is catering to the lowest common denominator here when they don’t really have to.  (As an aside, even in WoW I have always thought the sequential number of spells and abilities is lame. It’s always struck me as lazy and unimaginitive. Sad to see EQ2 pandering to that.)

Anyways, back on track. Sage. Right. Over the weekend I leveled him up to 20 tradeskill level. The first ten levels are a snap. The crafting tutorial quests do all the work really. The next ten levels are a bit harder. The trick here is to craft something you’ve never made before each time since you get bonus XP for doing so. It took somewhere between two to three hours standing at the engraved desk in the guild hall, but I did hit 20 which makes me eligible to do crafting writs and earn a bit of status, both for myself and the guild.

So there you go. My current gaming status.

Oh, and one other thing. I cancelled my subscription to World of Warcraft.

That little duty has been on my mind for a couple of months now, since the bottom has fallen out of the job market especially. I’m saving pretty hard right now as my contract completes at the end of August (unless I get another extension.) Worried? Yep a little. I’ve even had a bit of insomnia as a result. So I’m cutting excess costs, and even though a sub to WoW is on the low end of expense, it’s something I can’t justify at the moment. And since I’m not playing much Eve at this time, that will probably go too.

At least resubscribing is an option when times get better.

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