What Was and Never Will Be

Everquest kind of makes me sad.  It's a perfect example of a game suffering from mudflation.  Here you have a game where nobody plays at the low levels -- all they do is PL to get to level 65, 75 and up.  Valuable high-end gear sells for 1 million, 2 million plat, an unthinkable fortune in the old days.  Finding a group in the low to mid levels is nearly impossible, and all of the low and mid level zones are empty.

What really makes me sad are all of the zones that they revamped that are completely unused.  When I did the bard mail quests this weekend I saw a lot of them.  Steamfont Mountains has been revamped.  Misty Thicket, Innothule Swamp, Toxxulia Forest, Nektulos Forest, Eastern Commonlands, Freeport, North Ro, all of these zones have been revamped.  Nobody's ever in them.  In the old days these zones were always busy -- the game had 13 newbie starting zones at launch, 16 by the time three years had passed, and they were always busy.  It didn't matter which zone you started in, you'd find other players to group with.  No game will ever be like that again -- no game would ever take the time to create so many starting zones.  Even Everquest knows better; they've created Crescent Reach as a one-size-fits-all starting zone.  Every character, evil, good, whatever, can start there.  In fact, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that everyone will start there and all the other newbie zones will be left unused -- freebie accounts aren't allowed to start anywhere else, but the advantages of Crescent Reach are so many that you really wouldn't want to start anywhere else anyway.

It's sad because the revamped zones are very pretty.  They're comparable to modern MMOs -- not top-of-the-line, surely, but very comparable.  It makes me sad that nobody really uses them, not in the way they were designed to be used in any case.  There are still newbie zones and cities that haven't been revamped -- Feerot, Greater Faydark, Butcherblock Mountains, Everfrost, Qeynos Hills -- but EQ has zero reason to bother fixing those zones at this point.

It bugs me too that the boats are gone.  Mind you, being forced to ride the boats was one of the major problems with the game back in the day, but completely removing them sucks.  I really wanted to take a boat ride again, but all of the docks in the game exist for pretty much no reason now.

I remember "newbie runs" where the goal was to take a level 1 gnome from Ak'Anon to Erudin, crossing two continents through some very scary and dangerous zones and enduring two boat rides to succeed.  With dozens or hundreds of people participating, it was a ton of fun.  You could never get enough people to participate in that today, and even if you did, you simply can't make the run without the boats.

One thing I love about EQ is the depth of the world.  At the bottom of the Crystal Caverns is a Coldain dwarf town, with merchants and a bank and quests givers.  In the Goru'ka Mesa valley is a village of satyrs (Mitholen, I think they're called) with merchants and quest givers.  In one of the old goblin dungeons there was a goblin banker who evil types could bank with.  In the far North of Velious are otter folk with merchants and the like.  Everywhere you go, you find not just enemies to fight, but the communities they live in.  The game didn't just have 16 starting cities, it had dozens of more towns and villages and cities that you could visit, buy or sell at, possibly bank at or get quests at.  The world is vast and detailed.

Anyway, I don't have a point here, just sad at the state of the game today.  Things change, you can never go back to what once was (and in a lot of ways, you wouldn't want to), but there are definitely some things that I miss, that I'm afraid I'll never see in a game again.

Courier of Favor, and Hero's Forge

I did the "Courier of Favor" quest Friday Night, using an online walkthrough to explain how to do it quickly.  Even so it took me a good 2 1/2 to 3 hours to do.  Mind you, I took the long way in many cases, but still... it's a long quest.

If you were doing it the hard way (as in, no prior knowledge) then you'd be wandering the world looking for bards who want mail delivered, and making many back-and-forth trips to different cities.  The walkthrough explains where to go to gather all the mail destined for Kelethin, then all the mail for Freeport, then the mail for Qeynos, then the mail for Highpass.  You have to visit Freeport and Highpass twice, and you have to do a pair of sub-quests near the end of everything, but the end result is a very nice multi-slot bag with 100% weight reduction.

When I say I took the long way, I mean I ran all the way from Ak Anon to Kaladim and then back to Greater Faydark, instead of teleporting through the Plane of Knowledge several times.  I was bound in the Bazaar so every time I ported back I had to zone into the Bazaar and then zone out to the Plane of Knowledge, which slowed things down.  And I ran from Misty Thicket to Highpass, forgot to grab the mail for Qeynos so I had to go back later, and I also spent some time visiting the basement in Highpass Keep and reminiscing about the old days when it was a favorite place for players to hang out.

I also got confused about one instruction in the walk-through, which after the first contact Ton Twostring in East Freeport, it says "take the mage to North Ro".  I didn't know what this meant, but there's a mage in North Ro who can send you places... but you don't "take the mage" to North Ro, you don't have any other reason to be in North Ro, and the mage in North Ro did not send me to my next destination but instead sent me to Nedaria's Landingi, a zone above Surefall Glade and Jaggedpine Forest that I didn't know existed (it wasn't there back when I played).  This zone connects to some other continent via boats I think, except that boat service no longer exists in the game.  That makes me kind of sad, even though the boat rides were one of the biggest and stupidest time-sinks in EQ in the old days.

But basically, the instructions to "take the mage to North Ro" were both confusing and completely useless.  Not to mention, virtually nowhere else in the walk-through does it explain how to get from one place to another, so I don't know why that comment was even there.

I did the quest again Sunday on my alt enchanter Prisstina, who is by now level 36.  I did it much faster this time, in less than 2 hours I think.  I had a much better idea of what I was doing and I didn't get sidetracked.

Saturday I set out to vastly increase my tailoring skills.  I worked on Wu's fighting armor (with the help of viscous mana from my new enchanter) and got almost to 158 where the shirt becomes trivial.  Then I immediately started in on coarse silk templates, which trivial at 175.  When I ran out of coarse silk I started in on natural silk templates, which trivial above 200 but I ran out of natural silk at 175 tailoring skill.  I probably should have found more coarse silk to reach 175 before using my natural silk, but I was impatient.  Anyway, I can see that I need to gather a whole bunch more natural silk, which will be my new goal the next time I decide to work on it.

I also spent money on the market.  I finally bought the Hero's Forge update for my character, and ran around  looking for Sylvan armor pieces to update my look.  I had to substitute a few non-sylvan chain pieces so the work is still in progress, but I bought the bunny hat which was one of my main goals.  Ever since I first played EQ, back when a barbarian shaman who put on a leather cap would display a polar bear's head hat, I've wanted to some way display a bear's head hat with a more substantial armored helmet.  I even occasionally wore a leather cap just for that look.  Finally, EQ has made it possible to make any helmet at all look like a bear's hat (or bunny hat, or several variations). I approve!  This was the main reason I spent money on the Hero's Forge armor appearance upgrade.  I'd seen the bunny hat, and I wanted it.  I'm not skilled enough to make it myself so I spent waaaay too much money on the market for one, but I'm happy with the look.

I also bought a 36-slot 100% weight reduction bag from the marketplace since it was available.  It's WAAAY too much money, but for tradeskills I need as many slots as I can get.

Finally Made An Alt

Last night I made an alt.

Actually I made two alts, but I only really did anything with one.  That was Prisstina, a gnome enchanter.  I had a gnome enchanter previously in Everquest, purely because gnomes can learn the tinkering tradeskill and enchanters can enchant metal (and cast clarity, which I loved back in the day).  My gnome enchanter in the old days was named Ashti, and was at one point the 4th highest tinkerer on the Test Server.

My second alt was a dark elf necromancer.  I don't have any ulterior or trade-skill related motive for making her, but necromancers have always been some of the most fearsome soloers in the game and I had a dark elf necro back in the day as well that I enjoyed quite a bit.

I've been trying to avoid making any alts up until now.  My history with MMO's is one filled with many alts and very few high-level main characters.  In Everquest, I started with a wood elf ranger, switched to Jalia my barbarian shaman, switched to a druid named Ashleigh, then moved to Test and started a cleric named Aquaisha.  There were a lot of other alts along the way, but even after I settled on a new version of Jalia I had other alts -- Dill the rogue, a warrior, a monk named Shan Pu.  Party because of this, I never got Jalia or any other character to whatever the current max level was.  By the time Jalia hit 50, the max level was 60... then it was 65.  Jalia got to 53 or 54.  I followed this pattern in other games.  I was amazed when I played Disney's Toontown to get a character to the max level, because I'd never done that in any MMO up to that point.  In City of Heroes I got one character to 50 but I had a lot of alts, and it wasn't until I returned to the game several years later that I learned to concentrate on characters long enough to get them all the way to 50.  Even then, I had dozens and dozens of alts, and no character that maxed out the new alternate incarnate skill trees.  But I did have fifty level 50 characters in the end.

So with EQ I wanted to play just one character for a while, and I've done that.  But there's an advantage to having an alt or two.  More bank space, for one thing, and the ability to pursue tradeskills that I haven't yet tried.  But mostly it's fun to try different things.  Enchanters are fun for several reasons, such as all of the illusion spells they have.

I got my new chanter to level 10 in the tutorial last night, and I think I've learned how you can leave the tutorial and go back, though I haven't tried it.  But you can apparently log into the tutorial from the login screen at any point if you're level 10 or below, and can  teleport back there if you're still bound there until level 15.

My chanter is almost done with the tutorial already, but I want to kill the big boss still.  So I logged out before I hit level 11.

Having an alt also allows me to twink.  I bought an extremely nice any-level robe on the market for 5,000 plat (it was selling from others for as much as 45,000 plat, it's clearly a good twink robe).  I also bought a halfway decent dagger for 1,000 plat -- most of the daggers usable at any level were also very high priced.  I also bought another 16-slot bag, justifying a third of the five incredibly expensive expansion stone things that I bought the other day.  That was another 5,000 plat out the door.  I had come home to almost 38,000 plat, nearly completely recovered from all of my lavish spending on Sunday, and I spent a good chunk of it right away.  But overnight I sold 2 stacks of 20 gate potions, and those bring in 3,500 plat.  Despite the cost in making them, I believe I make at least 500 plat per stack of 20, but I haven't tracked my costs closely to see how accurate that is.  I managed to make two new stacks before leaving for work, so I may makes some more sales today.

Blackfeather Roost

Saturday I finally got around to leveling a bit in EQ again.  I made my way to Blackfeater Roost, which I'd heard was a dangerous place at level 55 (I was 56).  It seemed less dangerous when I first got there.  I killed a snake without problems, but then I took on a cougar, and another came by, and then another.  They killed my pet, they hit my mercenary very hard, and I was chain-healing and draining my mana very quickly.  I was almost convinced that we would pull it out when a fourth cougar joined in, and I had to run for the zone line.

After summoning my mercenary and pet and buffing up again, I went back and was more careful about pulling, and I made it to level 57 and earned an AA.  I decided I would come back the next day.

I ran into another problem my second day there when I attacked an "injured" mountain snake.  I almost didn't notice the problem until it was too late... my mercenary was at 20% health before I realized it.  Again I began chain-casting heals and this time we barely were able to survive the encounter.  A bit of research turned up the fact that the injured snake was the "named" snake or special snake.  He dropped a very nice magic item, a mask that I instantly used to replace the one I was wearing.  When I saw that snake later I attacke him again.  After another very tough fight, I managed to loot a very nice augmentation device that I placed in my mask to make it more powerful.  Later when I saw a "hungry mountain bear" I knew it was also a named bear, and prepared for  very tough fight -- which I almost lost, my mercenary died and I was left at 3% health.  But I looted a nifty cape and managed to find a safe place to heal up, so it was all good.  I made level 58 and 59 and earned at least 2 more AA's.  Level 59 was a big goal since that allows me to wear a piece of higher level defiant armor that I'd had waiting in the bank, and use a cool 2 hand weapon I had waiting as well.

I became very frustrated later when I first bought 20 rather expensive bottles of solvent instead of the 1 I needed to remove an augmentation from my old helmet and place it in my new one.  That was a waste of plat.  At this point I had 40,000 plat, so it wasn't a huge problem, but then I compounded it with several other mis-steps.  First I bought a Tailored Legendary Unexpanded Backpack, and then also an Unexpanded Supreme Backpack.  These are 100% weight reduction 14 slot and 16 slot bags when expanded, but in order to expand them I had to buy a special item, and it turned out to cost over 2,000 plat -- and then I accidentally bought 5 instead of just the two I needed, so that was 13,000 plat out the door immediately.  I decided on reflection to consider this an investment in three more of the same kind of bags, because they're very useful.  The ones I bought had cost 2,000 and 3,000 plat which was a good deal considering they are normally being offered for 3,000 and 5,000 respectively, but it was an expensive investment all the same.

The frustrating part was that I needed to scribe a special tome to learn how to do the combine that expands them, and I couldn't figure out how to find it.  It was in the zone Sunset Hills, which was supposed to connect to the Guild Lounge, which connected to the Plane of Knowledge.  This seemed straightforward, but when I zoned into the Guild Lounge I couldn't find a zone connection to "Sunset Hills".  After a bit of exploration I found the only other zone connection, but this went to various housing areas, each named by whatever guild controlled it.  None of the options said "Sunset Hills" and nothing I could find online explained where Sunset Hills really was or how to get there.  Eventually I picked a destination at random, hoping that each guild's instance was somehow set in a version of Sunset Hills.  This in fact turned out to be the case, but it was kind of annoying that nothing explained that ahead of time.

I became more frustrated when I bought the tome I was supposed to scribe, and couldn't figure out how to scribe it.  I was familiar with scribing spells into my spell book, an assumed I needed some sort of book to scribe this scroll.  Ultimately I figured out to just place it in my inventory and right click on it, but again there was nothing I could find on the web that explained how to do this, it was just assumed that everyone knows what it means to "scribe a tome".

I was able to dye the Legendary backpack pink.  I was excited to do this since pink is not a color available for the hand made backpacks I've been crafting, but it turned out that pink and purple display as the same color.  Sigh.  The 16-slot Supreme backpack (for which I had to scribe another tome) can not be colored, but I'm happy for the extra space and 100% weight reduction anyway.

Before I went to bed I made more gate potions.  These are incredibly expensive, costing me over 2,000 plat to craft a stack of 20.  I failed twice too, which is a very expensive fail.  But they sell for extremely good money so they're worth making.  As far as I can tell there's only one or two serious alchemists selling on the market so the opportunity is there for me to make some money.  I was down to less than 15,000 plat by the time I was done, but by morning my potions had sold along with my backpacks and some halas meat pies and other stuff, and I was back to 25,000 plat again.

Bone Chip Ogre Guy

I made a trip two days ago to the Crystal Caverns in Velious.  This was kind of a trip into the unknown, although I'd been there once before.  Back then Velious was new and there were tons of people up there hunting everywhere.   This time, there was no one.  At all.

I wouldn't have wanted to do this at the appropriate level for the zone.  I was swarmed by orcs as I made my way down into the depths of the cavern.  I had trouble finding the area with the spiders, but once I did, I finally recognized something.  The only time I was ever here, I came with friends and guild mates who quickly guided me to that specific area to hunt spiders.  We spent several hours there, and I never really learned much about any other part of the caverns.

Anyway I hunted crystal spiders for a good long time and the arachnid creatures at the end of the hall as well, and I gathered nearly 100 pieces of crystalline silk.  That was my goal, but I also picked up a bunch of rare robes and weapons that were once considered very good, but are now mostly vendor trash.  I saved the best of them to try and sell for a few extra plat on the market, one blackened crystalline robe has actually sold so far.

Afterwards I made silk swatches and then crafted crystalline silk hats and shoulders until I was trivial on both, and then some pants I think until I ran out of silk.  The highest trivial items require 3 swatches of crystalline silk, so 1 attempt per 6 crystalline silks collected.  I need to go back and gather a lot more silk in order to skill up to about 136 in tailoring, and then I can move on to the Wu's fighting gear.  Tailoring is turning out to be still pretty difficult, compared to how fast I got to 200 in baking and alchemy.  But the skill increases paid off -- I almost never fail on my colored backpack attempts now.  I've sold a lot of colored backpacks!

I'm at 220 alchemy now, maxed out on the spirit of wolf level V potions.  I've sold some at the bazaar, and I sold a bunch of the skinspike potions as well.  I made some of the illusion potions but none of those have sold so far.  With baking I'm at 207, fully maxed out on smoked freshwater fish pies now and I've been making Halas 10 lb Meat Pies, which have resulted in a lot of pies but not a lot of skill increases just yet.  But I can make those for quite a while, just need someone to buy some of the ones I've already made.

I've been selling a lot of stuff on the market.  I was up to nearly 20,000 plat, then I spent a lot on alchemy and buying updated gear, and I was down below 10,000 again.  Now I'm back up to almost 29,000 plat.  Backpacks and alchemy potions and various defiant armor and weapon drops have been selling well for me.

Last night I saw someone advertising in the main channel that he was looking for a "usable 2 hand weapon for a berzerker, 6plat".  6 platinum is nothing, I earned over 100 plat before I left the tutorial, so I figured he was a poor newbie.  I was going to offer him a crude defiant greatsword that I had (level 10 required), but when I checked he was level 6 and still in the tutorial, so I didn't reply.  But he kept advertising that he wanted to buy a 2 hand weapon for 6 plat.  I checked again, and he was still level 6 but now was on the plane of knowledge, quite close to the bazaar, so I sent him a tell saying I could sell him the weapon that he could use at level 10.  He never replied.  I wondered if he was so new that he didn't know how to reply.  He kept advertising, and I was about to say something else when he suddenly appeared in front of me.

I hadn't even told him where I was at, so this surprised me.  I started to type "hang on a sec", but by then he'd already bought a 2 handed blunt gloomsteel staff from me for 5 plat.  This is a weapon I used for the first two weeks in  the game, so it's not really a bad weapon (for a shaman anyway), but it's a tutorial weapon.  I hadn't really thought there was much chance I could sell it.

I lowered the price on the greatsword and told him, but he just stood there looking stupid for 10 or 15 minutes, gloomsteel staff in hand.  It's actually a nice looking weapon, long brown staff with a skull on the end.  He was a newbie ogre with very little armor, only 1 or 2 pieces of the newbie tutorial armor.  I was wondering why he'd left the tutorial so early, that was a mistake I made my first time too though.

Eventually he ran off, never replying to me or my attempt to sell him the greatsword.  I shrugged and moved the price on it back up.  But later he started advertising in the global channel again.  He wanted to sell 20 bone chips.  This was a clue that he was a very old player who had just returned, because way back in 2002 necromancers used bone chips by the ton to summon their skeleton pets, and would buy them off newbies for good money.  But these days you can use an AA skill to eliminate the need for bone chips, something I only found out from people replying to this guy.  Nobody pays for bone chips.  I checked the market, and there were none for sale there either, so that confirmed what people were saying.

Despite this, the guy kept advertising a growing collection of bone chips (he was up to 57 last I saw) and also spiderling silk, which is not very useful in trade skills that I can remember (spider silk is what you really want).  I also checked on him again and he was back in the tutorial, something I hadn't realized was possible.  He was level 8 last I saw.  But essentially he spent the whole evening getting enough money to buy a weapon he could have found in the tutorial, and collecting stuff to sell for money that nobody actually wanted to buy.  All instead of just playing the tutorial and getting gear, weapons, and money  (not to mention levels) the easy way.

Buying Salvation -- The Coin Operated Faction Machine

Lashun Novashine is a paladin of the temple of Rodcet Nife in Qeynos.  To me, Rodcet Nife seems to be part Holy Right-Wing Bevolent God of Lawful Good and part Suicide Alien Space Ship Cult, becuse in their temple area is a tiny space ship thing that glows and makes sounds like a space ship.  I have no idea what it's really supposed to be, it's always been the spaceship of the spaceship cult to me.

Anyway Lashun wanders around North Qeynos yelling at people to be good and cease fighting, and to follow his god.  If you hail him, he will stop to talk, and you can hand him some bone chips, and he will bless you and cast cure disease on you.  And, oh yes -- your faction goes up with the priests and paladins, and Antonius Bayle (leader of the city), and Qeynos Guards.  And it goes down with the Bloodsabers, but they're clearly evil bad people that I don't want to be on good terms with anyway.  I think.

Lashun does the same thing if you give him two gold, which makes him a coin-operated faction machine.  With enough money, you can buy salvation.  I gave him 1,000 gold coins last night, along with 30 bone chips, which was enough to bring me from apprehensive to amiable.  That's only 100 plat, which I can make in 3 ice giant kills, which I can do in a matter of a few minutes in Everfrost.  Which I did, multiple times last night, while hunting mammoths for mammoth meat.

I want to go back and visit Lashun again with more gold coins.  Another 1-2 thousand should bring me to ally status.

Faction is one of those things that gives Everquest its incredible depth.  Few MMOs are as deep and complex as EQ, although Eve Online probably is in its own way.  Anyway, I've clearly fixed my faction with Antonius Bayle, and now I want to fix it with the Coalition of Tradesfolk in Freeport.  That's my next goal, along with more baking, working on alchemy, and paying another visit to my friend Lashun.

I also went on a buying spree in the bazaar last night.  I had over 20,000 plat and I decided to upgrade my equipment as much as I could, starting with buying a regular (non-legendary) Lodizal Shell Shield, which I can equip at any level and turns out to also provide Enduring Breath.  I'm undecided if I should now sell the Fishbone Earring -- I keep seeing the same two for sale in the market for 2,000 plat and 7,500 plat, they don't seem to actually be selling.  These days there are a lot of enduring breath items, and you can even use AA (Alternative Advancement) points to buy enduring breath if you want.

But I haz my Shell Shield, as well as the Legendary one in the bank for when I reach level 68.  The regular shield cost me 3,000 plat, 6 times the amount I paid for the legendary one.  Go figure.

I also bought a "Corpsegrinder", a massive 2 hand hammer with impressive stats and a cool name.  I upgraded my 1 hand blunt and bought a 1 hand spear to train on as well, but both of those weapons are unusable until I reach a higher level, so they're in the bank.  I upgraded a lot of my other equipment, replacing the newbie lamp in my range slot with an item that provided armor class and stat bonuses, and I bought a lot of enhancement items to slot into my equipment to improve them even more.  In particular I slotted a nifty item into my new helmet that grants me Ultravision (improved night vision), which is again something I have a spell for, but it's annoying to have to memorize and cast the spell every time it gets dark.  I think this makes for a pretty cool helmet.  ^_^

I spent about half of the money I had all told, so now I'm back in making money mode.

Fishbone Earring, Finally!

I finally got my Fishbone Earring, and it was after I thought I didn't even need it -- but as it turns out, I did need it after all.

I began the evening at the bazaar, having sold more stuff during the day.  I did an online search for Enduring Breath items to see if I could come up with something to replace the elusive Fishbone Earring.  I came across the Legendary Lodizal Shell Shield, which I found selling on the market for as little as 500 plat.  This was a little confusing -- I remember the Lodizal Shell Shield, I had one on my old shaman and was very proud of it, it's one of those things that was not easy to get at my level back then, I had help from several others, and when I left the game I passed it on to my friend and fellow shaman Roncor.  I didn't remember it being called "legendary" or having an Enduring Breath property, but for 500 plat I simply could not resist buying the Legendary version.  This shield works as a back piece as well as a shield, and has very good armor class for a cape (at least, in the old days it was one of the best AC back items a shaman could own.)

I was excited that I could own it again -- or an improved version, and especially one that solved my apparent need to breath underwater.  I bought my Legendary Lodizal Shell Shield and placed it on my back, and thought my Enduring Breath issue was solved.  (Side note:  it's a bit of a conciet that I need an item at all as shamans can cast the spell Enduring Breath, but I prefer to be able to breath underwater without digging that spell out of my spell book and casting it every 30 minutes).   However, I still felt like Hadden owed me a Fishbone Earring.  I had seen them for sale on the market for 2,000 to as much as 7,500 plat, so I could always sell it after, but I'd killed him too many times and taken too many faction hits to just walk away empty-handed.

So... I went to Qeynos Hills and killed Haden.  And this time, I got the earring.

I immediately decided to work on fixing my faction.  I conned some Qeynos Guards, and saw that I was only apprehensive to them, so that didn't seem too bad.  I entered Blackburrow and slaughtered gnolls for more than an hour.  I also took time to fish while in there, although I didn't catch the more elusive of the two unusual fish you can find there.  By the time I was done, I was at "amiable" with the Qeynos Guards and Merchants, and probably with the Jaggedpine Treefolk as well, so that part of my faction fixing was a success, but that leaves me with Antonius Bayle and Coalition of Tradesfolk to fix.

However, while in Blackburrow I fell into the water, and I decided it was a good time to test my new shell shield.  And it didn't work.  The earring worked just fine, but the shield appeared to have no effect whatsoever.  Eventually I realized that it was a level 68 and up item.  I've been fooled by this a few times now, items that are level locked can be equipped but don't do anything, and the level requirements are kind of buried in among the list of other stats in the item so it's easy to overlook.  And I had looked, but I was still working from the idea that the Legendary Lodizal Shell Shield was basically an improved version of the Lodizal Shell Shield (which it really is) and I had been able to wear the Lodizal no problem at level 50 in the old days.

So it's just as well that I got the Fishbone Earring.  I'm also not entirely clear on whether the Lodi shield will be considered a great back item at level 68, but eh, it still has the Enduring Breath effect and that's useful.

I also headed to West Karana and killed a buch of bandits there, which again helped me with Qeynos Guards, and with Karana Merchants and High Pass Guards, but not the two factions I was seeking.  I learned later that those can only be fixed via quests, but I know how to do it now (Coalition of Tradesfolk turns out to be merchants in Freeport, on the other side of the continent).  While in West Karana I killed some animated scarecrows and got more pumpkin seeds, and I fished for a while and caught a few Thunderhead Salmon (or something like that).

I almost forgot that my main reason to head to Qeynos Hills in the first place had been to hunt mammoths in Everfrost for mammoth meat (after visiting Hadden).  I spent some time doing this, and killing the occasional ice giant for exp and money, and killing the large snow spiders which occasionally drop barbarian parts (meat -- any meat from playable races can be used to make illusion potions, so any way I can get such meat without killing for it is very good).

I didn't get very much mammoth meat, which I will need to start making Halas 10 lb Meat Pies, so I will be back in Everfrost hunting mammoths again.

All of this faction work, however, makes me want to do something I'd wanted to do more than ten years ago.  Back when Kunark came out, it seemed really cool that you could improve your faction and be non-KOS in the Iksar (lizardman) city of Cabalis.  I always wanted to do that.  I have literally no reason to do it today, but I think I want to anyway.

Smoked Freshwater Fish Pie

So I did nothing very exciting last night.  I solved my smoked freshwater fish recipe problem with the help of EQTraders, where I'm getting all my recipe information anyway.  The recipe required a smoker, which wasn't listed.  Once I crafted a smoker and tried it, the recipe worked, so I helped them update one of their recipes that was wrong.

I smoked all of my freshwater fish filets and then made Smoked Freshwater Fish Pie.  I had to pause at several points to make more of this or that ingredient, but I made some 26 attempts and then was out of fish.  I got some good skill increases doing this though, and wanted to do more, so I headed out to the Blightfire Moors for another round of fishing.  After I got back I spent a good length of time turning all of my dye ingredients into extracts and then into dyes, which is a very involved process that takes time and costs a lot of plat, but now I have a large collection of dyes should I want to make more colored backpacks, and I don't have all of those ingredients cluttering up my inventory.

I really need to buy the tradeskill crafter's backpack from the SoE store, but it's kind of expensive.  But I could really use it, my inventory is becoming very cluttered.

After this I went to town again making vegetables so I could make vegetable oil so I could make smoking sauce so I could make smoked freshwater fish so I could make smoked freshwater fish pie... and I had to pause to make more egg batter as well.  I need to go on an egg collecting expedition, I've burned through my collection of eggs that I had in my bank.  When I ran out again, it was time to stop for the night.  My baking is now at 198 and these pies are trivial at 202, so I just need to gear up with enough egg batter, smoking sauce and vegetables to do one more round of pies, and then I should be set to attempt the Halas 10 lb Meat Pie, which I tend to think of as "the big one" because that's what it was way back when I was first learning baking.  It's not the most difficult thing any more, but it's still a huge undertaking and is still sold on the market.

I set myself up as a vendor at the bazaar after that, and I sold quite a few things before I went to bed.  I even sold some of my patty melts!  It's not a lot of money but it makes it seem like making them was worth the effort.  I hadn't sold anything else by morning, but I left my vendor up for the day while I'm at work so we'll see if anything else sells today.

Fish Rolls and Patty Melts

The thing about baking in Everquest is that there are hundreds of recipes for all kinds of interesting concotions, but a large number of them require "foraged" items, and until yesterday I didn't even remember what foraged meant.  I was thinking there were an awful lot of ground spawns out there that I hadn't noticed yet.  Then I realized / remembered that foraging is a special skill that only a few get -- rangers, druids, elves, iskar, something like that, but mostly only rangers get it at full strength.

Except -- I also discovered that these days, anyone can put 3 AA (alternative advancement that you get after level 50) points into forage, and are allowed to forage up to a capped 50 points.  I had been saving up my AA's so I immediately put 3 points into forage and started working my new skill.  I'm not sure what I can accomplish with forage at 50, I couldn't find any information on the web that explained that to me so I just went for it.  Hopefully I can scrounge up some or most of the things I'd like to try in baking, because these days you can't depend on a lot of low level and mid level rangers and druids selling you their foraged stuff, because most of the low and mid level zones are empty nearly all of the time.

In one evening I managed to get up to foraging 12 and foraged 3 pods of water.  Yay.

My goal for the evening was to work on fishing and baking, which I did.  I'd left my character in the marketplace overnight and all throughout the day, and I'd sold quite a few things.  I'm up over 18,000 plat now, which seems like a lot to me even though I know it isn't.  But it's plenty as far as allowing me to tradeskill and even work on alchemy, which tends to be expensive.  Costs for tradeskills and store-bought items have not changed with inflation, so everything that you need to buy from a vendor is much cheaper these days.

I fished off the East Freeport dock for nearly 2 hours.  This is "lazy" game playing, as in you're doing nothing and I was able to go cook dinner and occasionally come in to hit the fish button (I set up a hotkey that would fish twice and place anything caught in inventory, based on reccomendations I saw online).  Ultimately I got my fishing to up over 100, but all I caught in Freeport were fresh fish, sandals, and daggers, and fish scales.  Nothing exciting.  I caught a few Crescent Perch after I teleported back to Crescent Reach however, that was cool, but there's not much you can do with them as it turns out, just one recipe.

I had done a lot of research on recipes that I thought I could try to get my skills up close to 200, but after realizing that it would be a few days before I was able to fish and forage some of the ingredients, I wound up doing fish rolls to 143 instead.  You can buy fresh fish and batwings from vendors so this was very easy to do -- in fact, I wound up with far too much fresh fish, I bought a bunch in East Freeport before realizing that you can buy them in Crescent Reach, and then I wound up catching a ton of them while fishing.  So I had plenty of fish for fish rolls.

Next I decided that I could buy everything I needed to make patty melts, which trivial at 191.  This was a long jump from 143 but since I could buy the materials I could afford to fail a lot.  The only thing I needed was a non-stick frying pan, which, as it turned out, required a trip to the Jaggedpine Forrest for the mold to make it.  Once I got that made, I went to town and made patty melts for more than an hour.  I wound up at 190 baking skill, which I felt was good enough to stop and try something new.

I sold a lot of the patty melts back to the vendors (at a profit, it seemed).  I made so many and I'm not certain regular food like that sells through the bazaar, though I'm willing to try.  I made TONS of patty melts, I was getting only 1-2 skill increases per 40 attempts for a while there.

My next goal was complicated.  I wanted to make Smoked Fresh Fish Pie.  This turned out to require me to brew smoking sauce, which required me to first brew vegetable oil, which required me to first mix lettuce, carrots and turnips into "vegetables".  That was a very involved process, and then I discovered that I needed a tacklebox in order to produce filet of fresh fish, which meant a trip to the Plane of Knowledge.  After that I realized that my fresh fish could not be turned into filet of fresh fish (oddly enough), but several different other types of fish could.  This did not include Crescent Perch.  I fished in Blightfire Moors for a while and was able to catch enough fish to produce 26 filet of fresh fish.  Then it was on to the next step, which was turning snake eggs into egg batter.  I'd collected snake eggs all evening as I was able in preparation for this, so this step went smoothly.

The last step before making the pies was to turn my filet of fresh fish into smoked filet of fresh fish.  Supposedly this was simply combining the filet of fresh fish with smoking sauce in a mixing bowl, but this did not work.  I was given a message that indicated this was not a proper recipe, so I was stuck at that point and decided to log off for the night.

I killed Hadden in Qeynos Hills again.  Still no Fishhook Earring.  I've become concerned with the faction hits -- not that I plan to stop killing him, but I check on guards and such before I approach them now.  Jaggedpine Woods is near Qeynos and I travelled through the ranger glade there to get to the forest, and I was conning everything to make sure nobody hated me yet.  But after checking what faction hits I get from killing Hadden, none are Jaggedpine Tree Folk:  Antonius Bayle, Guards of Qeynos, Merchants of Qeynos, and Coalition of Tradesfolk.  Antonius Bayle is the leader of the city.  Some of these factions I can fix by killing gnolls and bandits, but I have to check to make sure whether it fixes all of them.  But the guards are the important one, they're the ones who will attack you on site if they don't like you.  Merchants just call you names when you try to trade.

Siren and Bixie

This weekend I finally decided that I would spend some money on Everquest, which I've been playing for more than two weeks now.  I bought a three month subscription, and I bough some extremely frivolous items from their online store.

Friday night and Saturday morning I did more tradeskill stuff.  I spent another couple of hours in Permafrost, and this time I scoured the whole keep (aside from the area where Lady Vox the dragon dwells) and located many of the permafrost crystal ground spawn locations.  I wound up with about 25 permafrost crystals, more than enough to keep me busy for a good while.  The next day I hunted animate scarecrows in West Karana for the Jack-O-Lantern fungus they drop, but they only dropped one so that was a bust.  I came up with some pumpkin flesh and seeds for baking though.

I've killed Hadden at least twice more, still no underwater breathing earring.  I'm taking quite a few faction hits from killing him, but I don't ever need to visit Qyenos anyway, and in any case I can slaughter knolls and bandits until the cows come home to fix faction later.

I visited Lesser Faydark again and picked up more Jack-O-Latern fungus and Sarcosypha Fungus.  I visited Meras Seru again, but only scrounged up one charcoal (and some iron oxide and russet oxide).  Later I was able to buy more iron oxide and charcoal from a vendor that someone had sold to, so I'm now really set for more dyes.  Not that I actually need more bags at this point, and I don't think they're very marketable, but I want to make more purple and dark blue bags.  Also, the dyes can be used on the higher-level bags that I'll make later on.

The frivolous items that I bought were two polymorph wands that turn me into a small flying fairy or a siren.  These are, in my opinion, two of the best-looking polymorph options available.  I also bought a "petamorph" wand that turns my pet into a bixie -- a small bee girl.  (Actually, it turns my pet into a LARGE bee girl, but I can shrink her down afterwards.)  I like this -- she looks better and doesn't bark and howl all the time.  I also bought a potion of "pet amnesia" that allowed me to rename my pet permanently.  I wanted something that worked for a bixie/fairy sort, so I thought about calling her Honey and then settled on Clover instead.

The biggest thing that buying a subscription offered me, though, was the chance to set myself up at the market as a seller.  So strangely enough, no sooner had I paid for a subscription than I got my character all set up and walked away from the computer.  Over the course of Saturday I sold quite a few things and made some money -- I'd been saving up drops for a while, mostly various flavors of the defiant armor and weapons that really are good equipment at whatever level they're intended.  And that's mostly what I was able to sell, too.

Sunday I spent more time foraging for trade skills.  I decided to work on baking, and to use up some of the various meats and baking materials I'd collected so far.  My skill was 70, and I had drake and wurm meat that can only be used in pickling, which was a 75 trivial, and that required me to travel all the way to Cobalt Scar in Velious to get the ingredients needed to do the pickling.  This was a tricky journey into the unknown. I used a shortcut through the Plane of Mischief, and found myself by the shores of a big lake in a zone that tops out at level 50, so it wasn't very dangerous to me.  The water is filled with creatures that attack on site -- cold water barracuda, sharks, possessed treasure chests, and sirens that looked very much like I currently looked.  And they all dropped valuables or meat that I could use in baking, so I spent a good amount of time swimming underwater (I got to use my enduring breath spell) and killing everything except the friendly otter folk, who sold me their spices and bought all the junk I dredged up.

I have to say, the siren polymorph looks good but has limited movement -- it's not designed to sit down or kneel, for example, so when I sit to meditate I can't see myself sitting.  But it's very much designed to swim underwater, and to look good doing that, so I enjoyed swimming underwater and looking like I actually belonged there.  ^_^

When I was finally done I gated back to Crescent Reach and spent a lot of time baking.  I made pickled wurm, pickled drake, siren pickles, candied spiders, lemon pie, and finally animal and barbarian-shaped cookies, which required a detour to Freeport to buy the cookie patterns.  Freeport was kind of sad -- it's been fully updated and looks much better than it used to (although it still looks like a muddy, crummily-built outpost city, which it's meant to be), but there was no one around.  Many, many of the zones in EQ (on Firiona Vie anyway, but likely on many servers) are empty, while the "hot zone" servers and high end servers see action (and Plane of Knowledge and the Bazaar are always busy).

Anyway I got my baking skill up from 70 to 106, so I did some good.  ^_^

Then I set myself up to try and sell more junk!  ^_^