Everquest -- Getting Up to Speed

Tuesday night I logged in to the bazaar.  I did some shopping and found much better prices on things I could use than the day before -- as usual, I spent too much money the first day because I was impatient.  I bought what I could afford, and decided that more money was in order to complete my equipment makeover.

One thing I discovered was that I had to actually go to the merchants to buy from them.  I had been doing this, of course, but there was also a "buy" button in the search window, but the few times I  tried to use it I was told that "you have to purchase the current expansion to use this item".  The first time I encountered this, I thought it was saying that about the specific earring I tried to purchase, and so I missed out on a good deal.  Oh well, it's not like running to the merchant is all that hard, even if the new bazaar is a confusing maze, you can click on their name and the game leads you right to them.  I've been using that feature a lot, all of the Planes of Knowledge is a maze too.

I kind of miss the old layout of the bazaar and the whole Luclin starting location.

I went back to the Blightfire Moors to hunt.  I decided at first to try and complete a quest I'd take at random the day before, which involved finding the gnoll foreman in the nearby gnoll mines.  They were all light green or gray con to me, barely any exp involved at all, and the money was only so-so, but I spent a good hour or more killing gnolls trying to make the foreman spawn.  Later I realized there was a second mine, but by that point a group was monopolizing the whole area, pulling every gnoll in the area into the mines to kill them en masse.  I assume they were higher levels working on faction or something, I don't know, but I wasn't able to complete my quest.

I went back to the sporioli decayer (mushroom guys) camp and began killing Dragoneater again.  Eventually this place became a little crowded too, with several others hunting the area.  I buffed some of them because I felt like an interloper, I was pretty high level for the camp by now.  But in the end I managed to earn over 2,000 plat and even gained 3 levels to 36, which surprised me.  I went back to the bazaar and carefully shopped for items that were improvements over my newbie gear, and I think I did very well for myself.  I had a bunch of stuff I had intended to sell as well, but it turns out only subscriber accounts can sell.  I don't know if I'm ready to spend money on this game again, or not.  So that was the end of my evening, level 36 and much better equipped, with a good amount of money left.  I really feel I could hit 40-42 this evening if I move on to someplace where I get normal experience.