Master Alchemist

Monday night I decided to camp deepwater ink in Kedge Keep.  It was a lazy camp, I spent time doing other things -- making an omelet for dinner, making salads for lunch the next day.  Kedge is almost completely gray to me now, most of the mermaids are green or gray but the named ones are still light blue (and a few of the unnamed ones).  In the end even with turning experience to 100% AA, I only earned one AA in my time hunting there.  Despite this, one of the named mermaids proved very difficult to kill... she kept healing herself and the fight went on for more than 15 minutes, before she finally stopped healing.

I came away with 88 deepwater inks in 2-3 hours of casual play.  I didn't think that would be enough to get me from 297 to 300 in alchemy, but it turned out that I got lucky.  I hit 300!  This is the first time I've ever been a master at any of the EQ tradeskills, so I'm pretty proud of the fact.

Tuesday I went to the caves in Blackfeather Roost and did the same sort of thing, with an eye to getting tailoring drops.  The light blue bears and spiders were much better experience for me here -- I earned multiple AA's, maybe 20 or more.  I also got a lot of silk and pelt drops, and went to town on tailoring.  I got to 200 pretty quickly, making me a journeyman tailor, but after that I went through about 70 combines without a single skill increase, so that was pretty disappointing.

Tradeskilling

Between tradeskilling and marketing I've managed to get Jalia up a few levels.  She's 64 now.

Lately though, I've been doing little besides hunts for dyes and high quality skins needed to make the colored backpacks that I sell, and bouts of making potions and halas 10-lb meat pies to sell.  Ornate Defiant armor drops quite a bit off the bears and wolves that I hunt in Mesa, so that provides extra stuff to sell.  And that's been almost everything I've done -- just occasionally I've traveled to Blackfeather Roost or Undershore or wherever to gain some actual experience.

This past weekend I finally got around to doing the tradeskill quest that nets you the evolving tradeskill trophy.  I did this for alchemy first, of course.  I was worried about doing this after having waited so long, and true to form the Journeyman's Alchemy Test required me to make several things that included dropped ingredients -- things that I couldn't just buy.  But after a little research I realized that all I needed to finish all of the challenges was some hearty goblin blood... several at least.

After a little research I traveled to Kunark and headed to the Frontier Mountains.  The two places I wanted were the Mines of Nurga and the Temple of Droga, but the temple was closer to where I zoned in so I picked that.  Soon I found myself in a warren with goblins that were all green or light blue to me (some were even dark blue), and which dropped not only hearty goblin blood for alchemy, but green goblin skin which is used to make black dye.

For a brief, shining moment, I thought I'd found the perfect hunting ground.  I could earn experience, I could gather ingredients for alchemy that would allow me to increase my skills, and I could solve my black dye problem.  Black dye is one of the hardest to come by, and I need it not only for black but also for the light gray that I use to make purple backpacks.  You get it from charcoal, which is an extremely rare drop, or from blue slumber fungus, which is an extremely rare ground spawn in Lesser Faydark (if I'm lucky I can find two on any given trip).  There are other things that make black too -- all of them difficult to come by, it seems.  But here I could amass a large collection of green goblin skin while doing other things!

Well... it didn't quite work out like I'd hoped.  I set myself to 100% AA experience and I probably earned 20 to 25 AA points in an afternoon of hunting in Droga.  That worked out well.  But for all the time I spent there, I came up with only 20 hearty goblin blood and 7 green goblin skin.  So... not exactly a solution to my problems.  I read later that for skilling up in higher-level alchemy, everyone agrees that Deepwater Ink or Nodding Blue Lilly are the only ways to go.  I'd already learned to farm Deepwater Ink in Kedge Keep, and it looked like I'd be heading back there for many more trips.

But on the bright side, I finished my quest and got my Journeyman's Alchemist Trophy!  I picked up the baking and tailor trophy quests to work on later.

Tuesday I set out to do the baking quest.  This was also a journeyman's quest that required a lot of dropped items.  I had to hunt treants in Blightfire Moors -- and I learned that only the treants in the swamp area dropped what I wanted, and I'd never been to that place before.  I had to travel to the they Abysmal Sea to fish for saltwater crab (it's not an easy place to get to either), and I had to travel to Cobalt Scar once again to buy ingredients from the otterfolk vendors there (also not an easy place to get to).

But by the time I was done I had my baking trophy.  This one was even more difficult than the alchemy one, but it's done now.  Tailoring will be next.

Late last night I discovered a couple of vendors in the bazaar selling massive quantities of Deepwater Ink and Nodding Blue Lilly.  Now, I've been amassing a tiny fortune through marketing for weeks -- not really spending money on anything.  I had nearly 150,000 plat, which is not a lot to some people, but was quite a lot to me.  But the prospect of not having to hunt interminably for alchemy ingredients was too great to pass up.  I spent a bit over 50,0000 plat on hundreds and hundreds of Nodding Blue Lily and Deepwater Ink, and tonight I spent several hours working my way through well over a thousand alchemy combines.  Ultimately my skill jumped about 50 points, from 243 to 294, but things were going so well in the middle of that that I really thought I'd hit 300 and become a master... then, over the course of the last 350 combines, I only managed 4-5 increases.  This was very disappointing, although overall being 6 points away from master status is pretty cool.  One good round of Deepwater Ink gathering in Kedge Keep should get me to master now.  Or maybe I'll just buy some more Nodding Blue Lily when someone has some to sell.

July 4th DXP Weekend

On the 4th of July I spent the entire morning in Kedge Keep.

I had visited Kedge Keep for the first time (other than entering it once years ago and not going past the entrance) a couple of days before, enough to learn that I could farm for deepwater ink and it was a viable route for me to skill up in alchemy.  At that time I'd farmed more than 20 deepwater ink and earned one alchemy skill point increase for my troubles.  My plan this time was to get at least 40 deepwater inks, but I spend the full morning there and came back with 160 deepwater inks total.  This was good enough to get me to 240 in alchemy, or about 8 points increase.  Pretty sad when you think about it, tradeskilling in EQ is everything I remembered it to be.

I gained a level and 2 AA points doing this.  Even though everything was light blue or green to me, double experience week was on so I was slowly gaining experience from farming.  But I wanted to take advantage of the DXP to level a new character up, so I spent part of the day working on my newbie dark elf necromancer, who I got to level 12.

Friday night I had to spend part of the time farming for high quality bear and wolf skins, but I also started a baby shadowknight (drakkin).  I spent part of Saturday morning levelling her up, but then I spent much of the weekend visiting my parents and sister's families in Longview.  Sunday night when I got home I was able to play my new shadow knight a bit more, and got up to level 32 and even hunted a bit in the Highpass Keep basement.

I worked on tailoring last Friday too, getting up to almost 200 now.  My other accomplishment was farming enough of the materials to make a nice backlog of dyes for the colored backpacks I sell... but now I'm low on hq bear and wolf pelts yet again.

I would have liked to get more accomplished for DXP weekend, but I didn't get to play as much as I would have liked.