Detoxing from Norrathian Overload

Holy CRAP did I play me some EQ2 this weekend.  Sheesh.

Friday night started out normal.  I got home from work, plopped myself down on the couch to eat dinner, and fell asleep.  I woke up a bit later and ate a now cold dinner and wondered why it was dark so early… until I saw on the clock that it was nearly 10.

I logged on and went a’harvesting before calling it a night.

Saturday, Raynar and Fuzzlewump, my brigand and wizard, got taken out after their week-long slumber to do some hunting in The Sinking Sands.  I spent several hours here knocking out quests and factioning up for Maj’Dul.

Around 3, a buddy who I often group with on the weekends logged on and asked me if I wanted to head off to Cazic Thule.

Let me be clear.  I freaking HATE The Feerott.  I hate it with a passion.  I have the worst time navigating that zone with all the impassible mountains and I’m contantly getting lost in dead ends that looked to be through-ways… all the while being chased by a mob 10 levels too high for that zone that caught my scent from half a zone away.

Anyway, I set off to meet him there, got lost, got killed by a roaming terror thing, and tried it all again.  I eventually made it and we set to killing.

Back in beta, I spent most of my time in Qeynos and the lowbie zones around there.  I ventured out into Antonica only briefly… not wanting to spoil too much of the game.  Of the lowbie zones, The Forest Ruins was probably my favorite.

When I pre-ordered the game and got the little DVD that had things like the advanced character creator and promo movies, I remember watching a demo of the game where a group of adventurers were roaming through an area that reminded me somewhat of The Forest Ruins and getting their collective asses impressively handed to them by a dragon.

As a result, I was always a little leery of going into the castle area of The Forest Ruins because I just knew that as soon as I did, that dragon would come home to nest.

Of course, as of Saturday afternoon, I now know that the video in question was taken in Cazic Thule and that the dragon in question does exist and that he can, quite convincingly, hand out a hearty collective ass-whuppin’.

I never even saw the bastard coming.

I’ve never been 100% convinced of the wisdom of placing high level raid mobs inside of a fairly low level zone.  It sure does make the zone inconvenient for those hunting there.  And, in cases like the dragon in Cazic Thule, I doubt there are many level 50-55 raid groups prowling around out there searching for mobs like this.

We made do.

Unfortunately, we had a number of quests to kill mobs that were up by him, but we were able to pull those mobs with only a few dragon-induced deaths.

All told, I gained 3 levels on Saturday and was about mid-way through 51 by the time we called it a night.

Yesterday, I got on fairly early and did some crafting and then logged on Rao to go do some harvesting.  While I’m off harvesting, I got a cross-server tell from Stargrace of MMO Quests.  We had a great time chatting back and forth while she worked on a tradeskill quest and I harvested away.

At one point, I had the crap scared out of me.

Last weekend, I participated in that GM event where I was awarded a house item and a stack of food.  While I was harvesting, I ran out of food and started going through bags looking for my extra stack that I always keep on me.  I found the GM food first, so I threw it into the slot and went back to harvesting.

A few minutes later, I hear a FWOOSH and my damn head caught fire and lit up like a tiki torch.  My first thought was, “Crap!  Another raid mob tucked away in a lower level zone.”  I started running while rotating my camera to see what was chasing me.  It took me a minute, but I finally realized I wasn’t actually in combat.

I took another look at the GM food and noticed it was called something like Bristlebane Japaleno Party Poppers.  So, “HA-HA, GM dude!  You got me.”  Soooo scared the crap out of me.

Later in the day, my guild buddy and I met up again.  This time, we ran off to Klak’Anon and worked through there for a while.  When both of my toons dinged 52, we went off to do the Mines of Meldrath instance.  We actually didn’t have high hopes of completing the entire thing, but really just wanted to see how far we could get.  Oddly enough, we were successful all the way through.

At some point during all of this, Stargrace sent me a tell again, but I was juggling 2-boxing, trying to work that instance, talking in Ventrillo to my group mate, and trying to not drop my Chilula Chicken Sandwich into my keyboard.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to chat much with her this time.

We finished out the day by finishing off all of the quests we still had in Steamfont.  Most were green with a few blues thrown in.  After the yellow con triple heroic mobs on the mines, the normal yard trash in Steamfont felt like a joke.  We had a quest to kill some harpies and steam elementals, so we just ran through that area grabbing as many as we could and then unleased AE hell.

Time was rolling around to call it a night so that I could get some sleep before coming to work today.  We headed over to Lesser Faydark to grab up the starting quest lines there and to get our stable updates so we could use the horses.  In the course of doing so, we forgot that my brigand and his defiler were both KoS to the Fay Court NPC’s, so we both took the express train to the Loping Plains zone line.

All in all, it was a very non-productive real life weekend, but an absolute blast gaming weekend.  My guys went from 48 to 52, I updated all of my armor for both toons to the 52 crafted, I gained a few other gear upgrades from Ornate chests, and gained a couple of levels on my provisioner and sage.  I now have all but 1 of my tradeskillers to t5 or above… which clears out a ton of storage space in my shared bank slots.

I do have a tip for everyone though… a lesson I learned through my marathon play session this weekend.

If you happen to step outside into the hated sunlight to stretch your legs and see something reflecting off the sun in the distance and your first thought is, “Ooh!  Shiney!”… you have been playing for too long.