Sorry for the lack of posting, been busy with stuff the past few days, though I have some posts lined up that will be published within a day or two…
One will be dealing with EQ2 related stuff, the other with gaming in general. Stay tuned, I’m off the next couple of days so I will definitely get to it within that time frame.
The time is almost here for my Brigand to start working on his epic questline. Yes, this is something that should have been done sooner, but I did take a long break from the game, so I’m just getting to it. Recent adventures have brought him closer to his goal, and I’m excited to get started.
A while ago I read the walkthru for the Brigand epic, finding out exactly what pre-requisites were required to start it. Aside from being level 80, which is obvious, I also had to max faction with Riliss, learn the Sathirian language, finish the War and Wardrobe HQ, and finish a collection tome from Nek 3, “Our Lady of Betrayal”. At the time I was already finished with one of the steps, having max faction with Riliss. You may remember earlier posts where I ran through the War and Wardrobe HQ, also when I finished the Sathirian language, which was the starting point for the Thugga questline (which I also finished). As of a couple days ago, I only needed to finish a Nek 3 run, in order to complete the collection.
My Dad brought his monk along with one of our guildies (a healer) and we attempted to clear the zone. None of us had ever visited Nek 3, so we were in for quite a surprise. It’s common knowledge that in this zone, you start in the basement, and work your way towards the entrance, where you would normally start in the zone (Nek, Nek 2). It might not be as common knowledge that you must figure out where to go to get there, as many of the normally open passageways are closed off. There’s also a multitude of shinies that are traps, along with traps through out corridors. Needless to say, we didn’t make it too far without a wipe, and there were several wipes along the way. All I managed to grab was the binder for Our Lady of Betrayal, but no pages before we called it.
Last night was a different story. Previously I looked on the broker to see if I could bypass the hassle of the zone and just buy all of the pages. All but one page was present on the broker, so I didn’t buy any of them, I decided I would just gather a group again and try to collect them myself.
In the interim, I switched guilds. The Obsidian Order was a decent guild, but their raid force was lacking (still being built really), and my Dad along with quite a few other guildies decided to go over to another guild, called The Covenant. The Covenant is lead by someone we knew in game, and came along with some other guildies we also knew. They already had a fairly dedicated raid force, so it seemed like a better choice for all.
Back to last night, I managed to snag Bashu (a guard that switched guilds with us) and his wife, Tabitha (who also made the switch), and we headed to Nek 3. We blew through it quite easily, and a lot of the zone stayed grey since I had leveled from 78 to 79 between the two runs. I managed to get all but four of the pages, but the main page I was concerned with was page 10, as it was the one page not present on the broker when I had checked. The good news was I grabbed up the most expensive pages, so we called it. The bad news is when I went back on the broker, I purchased 3 of the 4 missing pages, but the last one, page 5, wasn’t on the broker. So I’m hoping when I log on today I’ll find it, otherwise I’m going to have to take my happy ass back into the zone.
Earlier in the night I managed to get in on a COA run, and I got one decent upgrade, the Sebilite Chain Arms. At this point my Brigand has mostly legendary gear, with one fabled piece (and I believe a couple treasured). Hopefully with the help of this new guild, after a few raids I’ll be able to say I have quite a few fabled pieces.
So, provided I can finish my tome, I’ll only have to hit level 80 and then I’ll be ready for my epic questline. For now, I have 60% to go until I hit 80, so that’s what I’m going to concentrate on today. There are still a couple quests lingering in my journal for Kylong Plains, a couple more in Fens, quite a few Heroic quests for Kunzar (though I finished 3 of those in Sebilis last night), and I still have quests to work on in Jarsath. So I’m not wanting for things to do. My main concern is hitting 80, followed by getting my CAs upgraded to Adept3s at least, followed by getting better gear. Then I’ll be switching off between raiding with my Brig and leveling up my Paladin who is sitting back at level 70.
I’m also attempting to figure out what other class I might like playing, as I’d like to level another to cap. Who knows what it will end up being. I have a couple lowbies created, but they’re just sitting between levels 1 and 5. Who knows which will make the cut. So that’s what’s going on in EQ2 land for me, at the moment.
The Norrathian Newbie is back! I’ve finally dusted it off, and have decided on a new EQ2-related topic to discuss. Feel free to check out previous editions here.
As a Preface, I will say that I have written on this topic before. You can see that post here. When I wrote that post, it was before Game Update #40 (otherwise known as the expansion, “Rise of Kunark”) was released. At that time, racial abilities and stats meant little to a new character, and though I’m not going to retract my statement that “ultimately race does not affect the overall performance of a class”, it is fair to say that there is an optimal starting point, now. At this point I am going to list facts that could be easily found at any other informative gaming site, but also add some opinion, and hopefully help some people out that are curious as to “Which Race is Best for X Class”? Since my old post still gets a lot of traffic, I’m going to try to redirect it’s traffic to this post, which may prove to be more relevant.
Another month has just flown by. It’s amazing how much quicker time goes by the older you get. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually you blink and a year goes by. At least that’s the way it would feel. April was a pretty interesting month for me. I got sucked back into EQ2, and I’ve been enjoying that very much, along with some normal partying and of course, work.
Basic Statistics:
914 hits.
-82 under March (996 hits).
-2393 under best month ever (3,307 hits, August ‘07).
Top Referrer:
Two way tie between Gestalt Mind and EQ2-Daily.
New Linking Sites:
No new linking sites this month 
Top Posts:
1. Over Two Years of Everquest 2
2. Race/Class Combinations
3. Neriak Newbie Guide
4. EQ2 Meme
5. Dual Boxing
6. Neriak Crafter’s Guide (P.O.I.s)
7. A Better Tank
8. The Norrathian Newbie #2 - Aggro Management
9. The Norrathian Newbie - Control Effects
10. And Everything is as it Was
Making some new EQ2 related posts helped out site traffic this month, EQ2-Daily helping out with most of that traffic. My old EQ2 guides still get daily traffic, specifically from search engines.
Search Engine Terms:
Top: “tangrin eq2“ (Apparently the Ape is in demand)
Best: “i’m on my knees, forgive me please” (I honestly have no idea how this came up, but Jesus doesn’t live at the Lost Souls)
Runner Up: “incidents at Soboba” (Someone is looking for info on what goes down at the casino, two months in a row now. I can tell you things in person, but you’re not going to find the info you’re looking for here on the site)
A Year in the Past:
April of ‘07 was definitely a slow month for blogging for me, making only two posts the entire month. I was going through some issues with the wife because she got a different job at the casino and was working graveyard, so it was effecting our relationship. Around this time the guild I helped create in EQ2 was disbanded, because the politics just weren’t working out. Apparently I had also moved deeper into my love of the metal genre, as I spoke of purchasing a few cds.
The Present:
April of 2008 was definitely more exciting, and a lot more was going on compared to ‘07. I got started with a Napster trial and hated it, then moved on to Limewire. Yeah, it’s not exactly kosher, but it works for me. We watched a bunch of pay-per-view movies, and made a few trips to bars and people’s houses that included drinking and playing various games. There was some drama between friends, between me and a dude I got into a fight with, and even between me and my wife, but things have all leveled out. I also started up a new tradition with some of the guys at work. A couple weeks in a row I had a few of them over to my house and we started playing chess while drinking. This has since expanded to going to some of their houses, and to other games such as dominoes, spades, and even tetris. Friendly competition is always fun.
I was inspired by Rao’s recent post.
I decided to look through old screens I had of the game, and see what exactly I had that people might actually want to look at. I decided that a time-line of sorts was in order. I still have shots from my beginnings on Butcherblock the 2nd time through, all the way up until now. My experiences on BB when I first started the game back in ‘06, and my experiences on Nagafen (essentially my first 6 months with the game) were never screen-shotted. Pictures and descriptions to follow after the break.
