Bat Country (Steamfont) - Current Roster (1/22/2006)

[Murgos]

I'm on Oasis from around 7pm EST to 10 pm EST.  Either my 15 Bruiser "Religion" or my 25 Assassin "Reshe".  When Neriak opens up I'll be starting another alt, probably an SK, no idea what name yet.

BTW, selling collectibles == easy cash.  Stupid bone fragments and things from the Commonlands go for 5g a pop.  There is no reason you can't end the night with a bag full of these things to stick on the vendor.

[Sky]

I couldn't believe it...but Murgos is right. I've been destroying the stupid collectibles for months...woops.

I'm cancelling at this point for the summer and to focus on  . I'll probably resub around October.

[Sauced]

Kelavere is up to 42.  All of the 70s in my guild (which means everybody, basically) transfered to a raiding guild, so I'll be guildless the next time I log in, which will be in about a week or so.  Family in town for the weekend, and all that.

If anyone hasn't seen the LFGuild tool, login to an unguilded character and open the guild interface ("U").  Every game needs to steal it.

Also - found a level 60 collection quest from KoS, the components for which sell on the broker for a measly 4.5g total.  I'll try and poke around and find it, it's 3 coins.  Great xp, obviously, and a Droag illusion.

[Murgos]

Better hurry up.  It will probably get nerfed.

Not that gaining levels is hard though, I got 4 levels on the Bruiser last night (3 hours or so) and the last time I played the Assassin it leveled twice in the same amount of time.  The illusion sounds cool, whats a Droag look like?

If it's a guy in white long johns and a bowler I'm in though.

[Bandit]

There are actually quite a few cheap level 60+ collections to be had...great XP.  The majority of the player base is in that range so the collections are very common.  EoF collections are a little tougher because they always have one rare collection item, but the KoS collections (beholder eyes, dragons scales, droag teeth, etc.) can actually be quite cheap...and now they are much easier to find with improved searching on the broker.

[Xerapis]

I always found the EQ2 AH-equivalent to be rather non-intuitive.  WOWs is easy happy time for me, and I list stuff all the time.  But when that EQ2 thingy pops up...my eyes start to glaze over.

Oh, and my highest level char was 19 before.  I never got very far because I dont know anyone else playing.  And back in the day, it was much less pleasant going alone.  I hear that has changed, but I'm not feeling at that hopeful.

Do we even have a guild?  Any experienced crafters?  I like crafting ^^

~sigh~

[Murgos]

If you played at release you will probably recall that the VAST majority of mobs just roaming around were group only mobs.  It's completely reversed now.  Soloing is very easy so far.  All the instance zones now have a solo version, most anything not in a dungeon is soloable, lots of the stuff in the dungeons is also soloable, well, eventually anyway.   Lots of solo quests and etc...

Most new players are over in Fae or as of last night Neriak.  Darklight wood was packed with two instances up on Oasis which was listed as a Medium load.

I don't know about crafting but from what I understand the whole thing has been redone.

Also, I named my SK 'Taxes', because there is nothing more evil than Taxes...

[Xerapis]

Umm.....maybe "Dubya"?

[Surlyboi]

If it's a guy in white long johns and a bowler I'm in though.

Proper horrorshow, that...

[Sky]

I always found the EQ2 AH-equivalent to be rather non-intuitive.  WOWs is easy happy time for me, and I list stuff all the time.  But when that EQ2 thingy pops up...my eyes start to glaze over.

Oh, and my highest level char was 19 before.  I never got very far because I dont know anyone else playing.  And back in the day, it was much less pleasant going alone.  I hear that has changed, but I'm not feeling at that hopeful.

Do we even have a guild?  Any experienced crafters?  I like crafting ^^

The Broker works fine. I like it. You can go to  your sell window and browse for each item, so you can see the going rates, including the broker commission and location (I'm an undercutting bastage). It keeps a nice log of transactions, too. Splendidness.

I've soloed two characters to over 30 (Wiz and SK). There's plenty of solo content, just don't expect to go soloing in dungeons when the items mean anything or expect to get any experience doing it. Dungeons and many named encounters are still non-scrub (group-only). But if you set that aside and just stick to questing, there's tons of content to enjoy. Really...it's the mmo /I/ like most, and soloers come no more rabid.

Bat Country. Not real active. I have several crafters in the 20s and a couple in the 30s. But I'm now inactive ;)

[Murgos]

If it's a guy in white long johns and a bowler I'm in though.

Proper horrorshow, that...

Droag, Droog, close enough  :-D

[Murgos]

Umm.....maybe "Dubya"?

Well, I want to be able to group sometimes...

[Xerapis]

True, true.

Well, I whipped up a cute little Dark Fae Fury.  He's adorable!  But there are too many other fairies out there.  And an overabundance of reddish bat wings.  :(

Anyway, my name's Chayai, so feel free to contact me when I'm sporadically on during times which are not convenient for most of the civilized world.

[Sky]

I remade the iksar bruiser I had to delete to make my high elf pally for faydwer. Cool little starting area, but unfortunately they really blew it, maybe in feedback to all the people 'depressed' by Freeport. The place is Hate's Envy (or whatever) and everyone is all happy and friendly. Wtf? It screams 'not-evil'.

A bajillion people in there, even on Lucan D'Lere, a low-pop server. I'm glad I won't have time to play it for six months, maybe everyone will work it out of their system by then. Laaaggy and overcrowded right now.

And I refuse to play a silly little fairy, even an 'evil' one.

[hal]

Any one else check out Neriak? I was impressed. Kinda like old EQ1 but different as well.

[Murgos]

Yeah, I like Neriak.  Much more than Freeport or Qeynos at least.

BTW, the collectibles market fell out the bottom with all the newbies running around Darklight wood (three instances all weekend on Oasis).  Things that were selling for a couple of gold ea, like cracked bone fragments, have dropped to 10s or lower.

[Simond]

I remade the iksar bruiser I had to delete to make my high elf pally for faydwer. Cool little starting area, but unfortunately they really blew it, maybe in feedback to all the people 'depressed' by Freeport. The place is Hate's Envy (or whatever) and everyone is all happy and friendly. Wtf? It screams 'not-evil'.

I actually prefer Neriak & surrounding zones to Freeport, personally. FP always seems to be evil for the sake of being evil, to me - "Watch me eat this live kitten" sort of thing. Plus it has the stereotypical SOE "Evil = Dirty & run-down" look*.

Neriak seems much more a "These are our goals, if anyone gets hurt during them...too bad" type of evil, which is more believable to me. It's not being friendly, it's just that the newbies are useful; for the moment, anyway.

*Which is why my favourite part of the Luclin expansion for EQ1 was the Katta Castelium/Sanctus Seru thing: Seru has clean streets, white walls, bright sunshine, neatly tended gardens etc. and was run by an -pseudo-immortal nutcase inquisitor overlord whereas Katta was in perpetual twilight, torches everywhere, etc. and was (nominally) the 'good' town. Shame that, like so much else in Luclin, both cities were only half-finished.

[Surlyboi]

You nailed why I hate FP exactly on the head. The whole "Look how evil we are" just screams to me, "4th graders who's piss their pants when faced with the real thing". Evil that's amoral is so much more compelling.

[trias_e]

I just started Trias the Dark Elf Inquisitor on Oasis.  Running around doing newbie stuff at the Neriak newbie zone.  Well done so far, if a little bland, but I'm heading to Neriak now so I imagine that should be more interesting.

[Furiously]

You should come to AB... There are people there.

[Murgos]

I'm amazed at how much easier this game is to play now compared to the last time I subbed.  My assassin, which I started just after release, was nearly impossible to solo last time around and yet I've picked up 5 levels this time in just casual dinking around.  It took me loads of time to get my Pally up to 25 last time I played but now I've leveled two characters (an SK and a Bruiser) up to 20 with about half the effort involved total AND they are equipped better and much better off financially.

So far I'm liking the SK best of all my toons, more effective at soloing yellow targets (even yellow^) than the bruiser and also more effective at soloing groups of greens.  The bruiser is much better at single pull even cons though, just drops em down and moves on to the next.  The SK is good at those too, just takes more time so isn't as efficient.  I leveled both these characters in the same zones and in the same quests so the differences have been pretty obvious.  The paladin is still horrendously slow against any target regardless of level but I understand that he should get some good AoE stuff in the near future, dunno if I will have the patience to get him there though.  The assassin is sort of a mixed bag, anything killable drops in seconds but there is a very narrow range of whats killable and just forget ^^^ mobs, it ain't happening even at 10 levels above.

[Sauced]

Started in on DoF over the weekend, after dinging 43.  Wasn't sure if I was going to be able to handle it, but I was taking down 46-47 level mobs in Steamfont fairly easily so it was worth the trip.

I know it's old news, but what an awesome expansion this is.  Maj'dul might be my favorite MMOG city - the art alone is the best I've seen in the game so far.  The NPCs that are all attackable, various pick pockets eyeing your coin purse, agro thieves hiding in alley ways.  And that's just during the day - at night the arena crowds fill the streets and since they are 55+ they can all see through stealth at my level.

And why did no one tell me about the Court of Tears missions?  My only complaint is that they are too short.  Picture CoX style missions, they are basically short versions of that.

Hopefully starting the carpet quest this week.  Doubtful I can find help on finishing it, but you never know.  I imagine most people don't bother, just get to 57, walk in to Loping Plains, and pick up your Warg mount. 

[Sky]

Sauced, that's my quest for next winter. Ditch the alt-itis and push my SK up into the 40 bracket. I like the ranger and wizard, but the SK is my favorite all-around.

Of course, I need to re-enable combat exp at some point, the last three weeks I played with it turned off :)

[Sauced]

It was kind of make or break for me.  It was my next short term goal, and if I got there and found the content inaccessible or bad, it may have crushed my will to proceed a little bit.  But it's done the opposite - being able to access Kunark on day one seems entirely possible now, even on 10-15 hours a week.

Next short term goals - getting access to the solo instances in Feerrott and Everfrost, starting Prismatic One and Peacock (hahaha, maybe when I'm 80 I can come back and solo them).

Since it's been out long enough, I guess it isn't a bug, but it turns out the 30 minute timers on the Tears missions start on completion - you can get to the last guy, leave, re-enter the house (they all happen in the same house, which is meh) and the quest respawns.  Haven't bothered "exploiting" this yet, but the groups of mobs you fight there seem to have a high coin/chest drop rate. The quests also use the object placement system to cool effect.

[Sky]

That's the nice thing about EQ2, they've added so much content, I really look forward to going back every year. They could stop making new content right now and I've got several more years worth (since I solo and level slow).

Sure, I'd like to take on more Nameds and Dungeons, but at least they throw mountains of content in to distract me from that most of the time.

[Bandit]

It was kind of make or break for me.  It was my next short term goal, and if I got there and found the content inaccessible or bad, it may have crushed my will to proceed a little bit.  But it's done the opposite - being able to access Kunark on day one seems entirely possible now, even on 10-15 hours a week.

Next short term goals - getting access to the solo instances in Feerrott and Everfrost, starting Prismatic One and Peacock (hahaha, maybe when I'm 80 I can come back and solo them).

Since it's been out long enough, I guess it isn't a bug, but it turns out the 30 minute timers on the Tears missions start on completion - you can get to the last guy, leave, re-enter the house (they all happen in the same house, which is meh) and the quest respawns.  Haven't bothered "exploiting" this yet, but the groups of mobs you fight there seem to have a high coin/chest drop rate. The quests also use the object placement system to cool effect.

Not sure you can really exploit the tears grifter quests that way.  I don't believe the drop rate on the mobs is any different than solo mobs elsewhere (actually I think it may be less - don't they only drop minute amounts of cash?), plus the benefit of doing them really comes down to the XP reward for turning them in and the Coin/Blade/Truth tokens recieved.  The tokens actually sell pretty well on the broker, up to a couple gold each - or can be used to gain faction with one of the courts.

Also, unless another change has been made - I though it was a 15-minute wait.

[Sauced]

I'm sure it's all relative.  The one time I did it (as a result of having to flee due to running out of poison against a yellow^), I wound up making a few extra gold off the mobs and looting an additional adept I that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.  The extra 10g is nothing to most people, but it's plenty to me.  Worth actually running in and out?  Nah.

Didn't know the coins sold on the broker - thanks for the tip.  And I've only read about the 30 minute timer on Tears quest resets - I usually carpet back to SS and work on the beetle quests or factions quests in the interim.

[Bandit]

Before you sell the coins though, make sure your gaining enough faction with one of the courts to actually gain access into that court - which opens up new quest lines, brokers, access to 51-60 apprentice II's (spells are not automatically gained upon leveling post 50). titles, etc.  Coin seems to be the best located, so after grrifter quests take blade or truth coins, it doesn't matter, just don't take coin ones.  Turn those coins into the appropriate coin dude at the bottom of the tower of moon which is basically at the gates of Maj' Dul.  Obviously, only do coin related quests off the docks in this case as well.  You may have already known much of this, just a few tips.

[Sauced]

I'm a little on the Blades side, but the Coin quests at SS are easier, so no biggie.  Hilariously enough, I started on the Coin side, but I didn't know how the Tears quests worked, so the first time I finished one I took the Coin... um... coins.  Since I wanted to go Coins.  Whoops!

Had forgotten about the "no auto-skills post 50".  That would have been a fun surprise.

[Bandit]

It is no real biggie if you do go blades, not that much difference between the courts....just different locations in Maj Dul, and different titles at max faction.  The Coin Court though is conveniently located next to the Golden Sceptre crafting area (if you craft), plus I like the layout of the Coins Court the best.  The mission difficulties within each court are relatively the same, but the Coin one does offer a unqiue repeatable faction quest - where you have to catch monkies in cages, which can be annoying but at least different.  A named monkey called Chim-Chum will spawn among them once in a while for named XP - easily soloable, drops chim-chum gloves.  The monkies will go bat shit though, and I have been killed numerous times underestimating those little bastards.

You can kill low level truth and blade guards to gain the court coins as well.  If you kill too many in Maj Dul at one time though, the Shairs that fly around in carpets will throttle you.

Ultimately though, if your a quest junkie you will have to go through all the courts for the "Ring of Fate" line.  At the end that torturous quest line you will gain max faction with all the courts and the title "Hero of Maj'Dul".  One of the more dynamic quests though, you will know if someone is going through it if you see Orcs all over Maj Dul.

[Sauced]

I've seen (or, been chased by) a lot of orcs in Maj'Dul.  Figured it was a night-time hazard. 

So, once you max out a faction, does it not decrease when you start working on a 2nd?  I know you have to do all 3 eventually, but how does that work exactly?

[Bandit]

It's a real grind - you actually have to start grinding out each court faction from the max negative faction to max faction.  You will recieve a 1/3 peice of a medallion after the final quest of each faction.  You will need these 3 medallion peices as well as a few other requirements - DoF can keep you busy for months.

http://eq2i.com/articles/The_Courts_of_Maj%27Dul:_Of_Fate_and_Destiny

The max faction for all courts is part of the final reward in additon to the ring of fate and the title. Until that point you can only really be working for one court.

Hope you are using eq2i.com, easily the best and most organzied site.

[Sauced]

Oh, yeah, I use it constantly.  I guess I could have looked the faction details up - I suppose I'm enjoying talking to another person about it.  Thanks!

[Bandit]

No problem, happy to answer any EQ2 questions.  Just wanted to make sure you were aware of EQ2i.  The explanation above is essentially why the faction tokens/coins are worth some money on the broker - not sure how many people would be going through that part of DoF now....but it seems there is always a buy for them.

[trias_e]

Tangent...

So AB would be a better place to start than Oasis?

And I'm debating between the dirge, brigand, or inquisitor.  Can the Dirge/Brigand get groups?  What about soloability, and the all important interesting gameplay?