Absolutely Your Grandfathers MMO: Let's Play Classic EverQuest!

[Cyrael]

Today we will be taking a look at the first little bit of Percii’s life after starting in her new zone and powering through our first level. I’ve recorded a steam of me playing, and have pulled screenshots and details from that to make this post - which will be much more comprehensive than the video!

What's a Zone?​

In EverQuest a ‘Zone’ is how the vast world of Norrath is broken up into chunks that players share. In this early day of MMO’s that means that there is NO instanced content - each zone is shared with other players on the server. This can be great in some ways, but challenging in others. No instancing means you effectively compete with every other player for key encounters, monster respawn locations, and quest turn ins. In practice this means that certain zones will always be busy, but others will be completely empty due to nothing interesting for the player base to engage with. Ak’Anon and the neighboring Steamfont Mountains tend to be under-populated as compared to other starting zones. For a Mage this isn’t the worst since we can effectively solo - but for more group oriented characters it means a long walk through dangerous areas until they get to a more populous zone.

A few other things that make zones in EverQuest different - there is no running away from enemies you have engaged with until you hit a ‘Zone Line’ and move into another area. When you have the attention of the enemy it will literally follow you until you zone out or it dies, and if it is on the same faction of other enemies in the zone they will join in. When this happens, it causes one of the most iconic of EQ scenes to unfold: The Train. It’s not out of the ordinary to hear in crowded dungeon zones a character /shout-ing “Train to ZL!” meaning they will be dropping anywhere between one and a dozen or more monsters on unsuspecting players. Additionally communication is generally only per zone (no global chat channels) - and I’ve had plenty of times when I’ve zoned into somewhere like Crushbone or Upper Guk and immediately died upon entry because a train of monsters had been left there that hadn’t naturally dispersed yet.

There will be more to be said about zones, but let’s take a look at the first one we will encounter as Percii:

Ak’Anon​

The Great City of Gnomes

Zone details​

As one of the starting cities of EverQuest, Ak’Anon has a collection of class guildhouses, shops, a bank and various city buildings such as the Palace of King Ak’Anon. Deep underground and powered by gnomish machinery, Ak’Anon is almost entirely populated by gnomes and their automatons. This is the only fully separate single zone city on Faydwer.

Adjacent Zones​

Steamfont Mountains, a large outdoor zone where we will spend the majority of our first few levels. It can support adventuring up through level 20, although we will likely go out of there before then.

Dangers​

Generally safe, unless you go to the Mines of Malfunction where aggressive broken automatons as well as general vermin (think snakes and rats) make up the majority of dangers for low level characters.

Interests​

For our purposes, the most interesting location will be the LIbrary Mechanamagica where our guild leader and spell vendors are located. However, locations like the Palace and the Pillar of Commerce will be worth visiting.

Getting Around​

EverQuest has no minimaps, and for many players the only way they could even get a feel for where things were at (at least in cities) was with the printed instruction book that came with the game. Each starting city had a great illustration with the major landmarks called out:

Rulebook Map of Ak’Anon​

On this map we are just southeast of location C - Ak’Anon Palace. In order to turn in our first quest we will be going to location F - Library Mechanamagica. It looks like a straight shot, so let’s head there, and maybe see a few other sights on the way.

Aside: EQ Atlas​

The instruction booklet only came with maps of the cities with any detail (and many parts of that omitted). During the beta and early eras of the game the most important website I could use was EQ Atlas. Hand drawn maps with key locations were created by someone I only ever knew of as Muse. Posted to EQ Atlas alongside commentary on important or dangerous parts of each zone their maps were incredibly valuable. Coupled with the built in /loc command (which gave you x/y/z coordinates of your current location) you could generally get around. The original site is long gone (Muse stopped playing and updating around the Planes of Power expansion), but it has been recreated and made available here. I’ll be using these Maps to give you a base lay of the land as we go, and I will be using them in my own travels! ()

Muse’s map of Ak’Anon​

Definitely more detailed than the one in the instruction book, both in amount of content and representation in the world. I spent MONTHS at school secretly printing these maps and descriptions out in the library and compiling an entire binder full of the world, with my own notes and thoughts.

Ak’Anon Highlights​

Let’s take a quick tour of Ak’Anon!

Palace
At the center of the great underground lake we can see the Palace of King Ak’Anon. Should we go visit the King and introduce ourselves?

Receptionist
Inside there is a clockwork receptionist to greet us, as well as a few flesh-and-bone mechanics.

Hail To The King!
According to the lore in the game, the original King Ak’Anon was a great mind who helped the Gnomes as they settled into the Steamfont Mountains after they were granted the land by the High Elves following their liberation from slavery of the Dark Elves. King Ak’Anon’s final invention was a mechanical construct that would rule the gnomes in his absence. Some believe he transferred his own essence into this automaton, but there is no evidence to support such claims.

Library
The Library Mechanimagica sits high above this cavern, tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the merchants square.

Guide
Various Guide Automatons are positioned throughout Ak’Anon, ostensibly to tell you where key features or buildings are… but sadly they have never responded to my requests.

Shopping District
All Gnomish buildings seem to be steam powered with extra gears added on for who knows what reason. This storefront is no exception.

Lyra
In the merchant square we get a view of the only non-gnome inhabitant of Ak’Anon: Lyra Lyrestringer of the League of Antonican Bards. She offers a quest to take mail to her counterpart in Kaladim, the Dwarven Capital. Despite Wood Elves being a ‘short’ race, she towers above the Gnomes.

The Great Wall
And finally, the great wall that separates the Steamfont Mountains from Ak’Anon. This is close to the zone line that will take us out into the wider world.​

Library Mechanamagica​

Wuggan​

From the helpful maps - and after those brief detours - Percii arrives at the library and encounters our guild leader. Handing over our note is as simple as picking it up with our cursor, and then clicking on the NPC we want to give it to. All quests in EQ end this way - by giving the NPC in question items that they have requested. When successful you have a great fanfare, a small amount of experience, and generally an item and some money. In this case we got a Dusty Old Robe, a starting chest item to equip Percii. It’s not amazing, but better than nothing!

Quest Turn In

Dusty Gold Robe​

We can also train up skills with our guild leader, but at this point we should hold onto our points to give us a head start on skills that are harder to manually train - most notably our Spell Research skill we will unlock. We get 5 skill points at each level, and our first ‘point’ invested in a skill will take us to a minimum of whatever level we are. So if we wait till level 10 for instance to learn a new skill, it will start at 10 instead of 1.

Next to him are mechanical vendors who have our spells, as well as general stocks of items they come generated with, and the items that players have sold. By poking around a bit we can see that we have the remaining 1st level spells we can purchase, all for about 1 gold each.

Spells​

Remaining Spells​

• Flare
  • Summons a small burst of light to briefly illuminate the area.
• Reclaim Energy
  • Returns a portion of the mana used to summon one of your Elementals back to your pool. We will talk more about how this is useful later.
• Summon Dagger
  • Summons a NO RENT (meaning it disappears on logout) weapon for Percii to use or to give to an elemental. These are ‘MAGIC’ tagged weapons, meaning they can hit certain enemies with natural weapon resistance.
• Summon Drink
  • Summons a single NO RENT drink item
• Summon Food
  • As Summon drink, but for food. Self sufficiency is in our grasp!
• True North
  • As mentioned before there is no in game map or compass. This will turn your character to face north upon casting. Generally useless but I appreciate the utility, especially as it will take time to get our Sense Heading skill up and running.

We will end up buying all of these, regardless of how useful they are… because why not? However I want to prioritize Reclaim Energy and the Summon spells. Our next set of spells becomes available at 4th level, including our first Elemental summoning spells, so it will also be important to start saving up for them.

But how can we get the funds to afford this? What coins are there and how can I earn them?

Currency​

EverQuest currency is broken up like a pretty normal D&D game: Copper -> Silver -> Gold -> Platinum (1 Platinum is worth 10 gold, 100 silver, and 1000 copper). Coins do have weight - meaning an overabundance of copper can cause you to slow down or be unable to move at all. Exchanging currency up to the next level requires you to go to a banker in the city.

In general the player economy revolves around Platinum - many valuable items are tradeable and a huge player run market has sprung up on Antonica near Freeport. At this stage of the game we can really only earn money through selling items from monsters we kill.

With that, I think it is time to head into the adjacent mountains and see what we can fight and loot!

Steamfont Mountains​

Zone details​

The Steamfont Mountains are the areas just outside of Ak’Anon and are generally considered to be the ‘Newbie Zone’ for Gnomes. Low level, generally unaggressive monsters prowl around the entrance to the city, with higher level and more aggressive creatures further out.

Adjacent Zones​

Lesser Faydark - a dark forest patrolled by various fae creatures, orcs, aggressive wildlife and the occasional bandit. I’m not joking that this is one of the scariest zones in the entire game to me - we will find out why when we try and leave Steamfont for the wood elf city of Kelethin.

Dangers​

Near Ak’Anon there are plenty of guards who will come to your aid if you are being attacked. The further out you go however there are nasty kobolds, rogue automatons from Ak’Anon, undead, and worst of all: Minotaurs.

Interests​

The entrance of Ak’Anon has several shops that will allow us to sell our loot and build up our wealth in order to purchase our spells. The Druid Ring just west of the city is generally safe and where we will spend our first few levels. Deeper into the mountains are large windmills where we will spend some time as well.

Steamfont Map

AkAnon picture​

Percii takes a short tour of some of the interesting sights, including the entrance to Ak’Anon. In 1999 this was a breathtaking vista!

Now, our next order of business is to find a safe area to hunt monsters. There is a Druid Ring that has a neutral NPC who sells a variety of high level spells (for druids naturally) where we might run into a few high level players to help us out if things get really dicey. Looking at the trusty EQ Atlas maps, I take the road out and a hard left till I find it.

Druid Ring​

Luckily at night the Druid Ring puts off it’s own glow, making it easy to find. Surrounding here are a variety of low level monsters that we can fight. How do we know how difficult a specific monster will be? EverQuest makes this information available using a chat command called ‘consider’ or ‘con’. Targeting an enemy and either right-clicking, or by typing /con will give you some basic information: how powerful the enemy is in relation to your level, and what their attitude is.

Consider values go from green (easiest, almost a guaranteed win, but awarding no EXP) to red (‘What would you like your tombstone to say?’)

The attitude is primarily driven around the target's Faction. Every NPC has one faction that they belong to, and many of them can be manipulated up and down through killing specific NPC’s or completing quests. Most animals have a neutral faction that cannot be adjusted, but it is entirely possible to make yourself hated by killing a specific monster over and over. Most of the things we will fight right now will be ‘indifferent’ or ‘dubious’ - meaning they won’t engage us automatically.

Combat​

Looking around I see a few likely candidates that /con white - meaning they are equal to our level. At first level we will not see anything blue or green - but plenty of yellows and reds!

I engage with our first few enemies with a combination of Auto Attack with our starting dagger, and Burst of Flame. I can usually time the spells to cast in between enemy swings, and get about 6 or so full casts before the mana bar is fully empty.

Until we get our Elementals at level 4, this is the extent of our combat. It’s a race to zero HP between Percii and the automaton, skeleton, giant rat, and whatever else she can find.

In between combat it is necessary to have your character sit down in order to naturally regain HP and MP. It WILL regain if you are standing and moving but at a much reduced rate. The absolute biggest downtime you will experience in EverQuest is related to HP and MP regeneration. We can mitigate some of the MP gain at level 4, but it will come with it’s own host of challenges. Oh, and don’t forget: regen stops if you run out of food and drink.

Percii focuses on anything nearby but pays special attention to decaying gnome skeletons. These enemies drop Cloth Armor pieces that we can immediately equip to give us a much needed AC boost. After a few tries we end up with some gloves, pants, a veil, shoes, and a belt. Sad to say this is going to be some of the best armor we will get for a long time. Skeletons also drop weapons and bone chips which we can sell to vendors. The bone chips we can save to sell to other players (Necromancers need them to raise their skeleton pets) or to use for quests. However, the closest quest for them is in Kaladim, and there aren’t any necromancers around, so off to the vendor they go.

Skeleton

Primary Attack Mode!

Various Loot​

Death and Dying​

While fighting skeleton after skeleton we accidentally get too close to a young coyote! At first level this monster absolutely destroys us. It /con’s at yellow - and we are at low health. It takes just a few bites before we are knocked unconscious (a neat mechanic that doesn’t matter after maybe level 3) and watch it take a few swings at us before eventually landing the killing blow.

​

The Great Destroyer

​

RIP Percii!


What does death mean to Percii? First of all, we awaken outside of Ak’Anon. This is our Bind Point, something all characters have. Non-caster characters can only be bound in a few very specific zones, and require a spell to be cast on them. Percii will get this spell (Bind Affinity) at level 12, which will allow her to bind herself ANYWHERE. We will also be able to utilize the Gate spell to return to our bind point.

However, Percii has respawned with all of her equipment still left on her body where she perished. Additionally, as a caster, all of her memorized spells are forgotten and must be reset. In order to recover our goods we must return to where our body was. For a low level character this is usually a pretty simple process: retrace your steps, locate your body, and loot it like you would any other NPC. In a newbie zone like Steamfont there usually isn’t much danger.

At higher levels though, dying can be an incredible challenge to overcome. After level 5 you will lose some accumulated experience on each death - even to the point where it is possible to lose a level, and by extension access to level-dependent spells and abilities. Also, when dying at higher levels you are much more likely to be in a dangerous spot - either surrounded by lots of powerful aggressive enemies, or deep in a dungeon. You may need to have invisibility cast on you, or other help to get to your corpse (since again you respawn with no gear). One option is to give a friendly player the ability to drag your corpse to you using the /consent and /corpse commands. In the worst case scenario a high level Necromancer can summon your corpse as long as it is in the same zone as them. Just come prepared to spend 300 or more platinum on the one-time-use reagent to cast the spell!

If you do not loot your corpse within a specified time frame (about 7 real world days) the corpse itself will decay, irreversibly taking away all of your items you had equipped at the time of death as well as anything you had in your pockets. This can be absolutely devastating, so a corpse run is always someone's first priority.

Percii makes the easy trek back to her body, recovers her goods, and promises to be more vigilant in the future.

Aside: My worst deaths - part 1​

I have two incredibly memorable deaths in classic EQ. One was technically easy to remedy, but expensive and time consuming.

One of the key travel mechanisms is via boat. A boat that runs in real time - meaning, you sit on it for about 30 minutes as it travels from Kaladim to Freeport. I unfortunately went link dead mid boat ride while playing my Bard, and upon logging back in I found myself swimming in the middle of the Ocean of Tears between Faydwer and Antonica. I tried Sense Heading to go in the direction I thought a safe island might be, but had neglected training it up and could never get a bearing. I eventually ran out of stamina while not finding any notable landmarks. At this point a pair of sharks came and killed me, leaving my body at the bottom of the sea with about 100 platinum and some really nice gear I had accumulated in Castle Mistmoore. I had NO IDEA where my body was, and since /corpse only works in a relatively small radius I couldn’t even spam it out and hope my waterlogged body would surface. I spent the next two whole days looking for a necromancer who would meet me halfway on the cost of the spell to summon it to a safe space. Luckily I found someone who would be willing to, but then THEY went link dead on the boat as well, stranding them in the middle of the ocean. They were able to gate to safety, but still ended up taking up another 2 hours before they were able to get to me again to summon my corpse.

Because of that, I now ALWAYS train up sense heading and never travel on boats with anything other than my key gear.

Leveling Up​

Skeleton Attack!

Kobolds

Rogue Clockworks​

It takes about a dozen or more kills before we hear the best sound in the game: “DING!” We’ve leveled up! The journey from first to second level is the shortest in the game, but is still a big power boost. We now have more Mana, more HP, our spells have scaled up (burst of flame can now do 4 damage instead of 3), and our skill ceiling has increased. It’s not unusual to see someone /shout ‘Ding!’ in the zone chat and then be congratulated by everyone else in the zone. Leveling in EQ is a big deal - and some levels (called ‘Hell Levels’) have additional penalties put on them that makes it take even longer to raise.

DING!​

Percii decides that between the full pockets and new level, it is time to go back to the Library and see about getting more spells.

Selling Loot & Buying Spells​

The mechanical vendors near our guild leader have most of the spells we get at first level, and will buy anything we have. Some of the extra gear we got from skeletons is able to sell for almost 3 gold each! Between all of that we are able to afford every spell on our list except True North - which isn’t sold by this vendor - and still have some left over for our upcoming spells. Spell costs will be the biggest money sink for Percii. Level one spells are 1 gold each, but Level four are 5 gold… and it just scales from there.

Undeterred, and empowered, Percii scribes and memorizes her new spells and takes a few for a spin.

Unlimited food and drink? Yes please!

Dagger​

The summon dagger seems to give us a better weapon than our starting one, and flare (while useless) looks pretty amazing while being cast.

RAW POWER OF FLARE!​

CURRENT STATUS:​

Level: 2
Location: Ak’Anon
Goals: Get to Level 4, don’t die.

All Equipped and Ready​

What's next for Percii? Well, to be honest… the loop we just went through will be the same until 4th level. This is a slow paced game, and we will be spending a decent amount of time just grinding against low level monsters till we can get to our next major milestone. We will try and get some of the spells we need and maybe a bag or two to expand our pockets! Feel free to follow me on Twitch as I stream out the next couple of levels!

 

[Violentvixen]

The train thing is hilarious.

Also there's something quaint about all monster names beginning with a preposition.

 

[Kalista]

If that buff af dogboi is a kobold "runt", oh my I fear to see what a kobold badass must look like!

Monster trains must be one of those "let's do this better than EverQuest" design progressions. I recall that in WoW, a monster that deaggroed after chasing someone would turn around and sprint back to its usual patrol zone, only latching on to another player if they snagged it with an attack or other provocation. Then in FFXIV, a mob in the same pattern actually turns invulnerable, making it nearly impossible to kite monsters onto other people over any kind of distance.

 

[Cyrael]

Also there's something quaint about all monster names beginning with a preposition.

In fact - that is really the best way to figure out if a monster is going to have unique loot! It's rare that any a <monster> will have anything special or unique, but someone like 'Ambassador D'vinn' you know will have cool stuff.

If that buff af dogboi is a kobold "runt", oh my I fear to see what a kobold badass must look like!

Yeah, they really took some liberties with Kobold on this one - not draconic at all. The funny thing is that most enemie groups share a single model, but scaled up or down based off of their difficulty. I believe that the 'runt' models (pawns if they are orc, whelps for goblins, pups for gnolls) are about 0.6 scaled. They just up that scale the more powerful the monster is. This even happens with our Elementals we will get!

Monster trains must be one of those "let's do this better than EverQuest" design progressions.

100%

The way that aggro works in EverQuest is pretty basic. Each NPC has a 'hate table' that you are added to as soon as it chooses to engage with you. This can happen via attacking, or due to bad faction and just getting a bit too close. That hate table can be manipulated, and the monster will focus on the character at the top of the list in almost every circumstances. Warriors can use Taunt to get higher on the list, and other classes have their own aggro management tools. You do have to be careful, as high bursts of damage will put you high on the hate table - meaning a Wizard who just goes in and dumps all their spells on a monster will find that their party won't be able to out-damage them enough to get higher on the list. We will be trying our best to manage these tables by allowing our Elementals to build up enough on the hate table before we directly engage.

A few classes do have some skills to totally remove themselves from the hate table. Monks have an ability called 'Feign Death', that when successful will entirely remove them. Necromancers and Shadowknights have a spell by the same name. These are used often to 'pull' enemies to safe zones, then let the actual tank engage, then feign death.

Enchanters have a series of Memory Blur spells that will cause an enemy to 'forget' it's hate list. This is one of the reasons, along with stuns and charms, as to why Enchanters are so highly valued in groups. Crowd control is their bread and butter.

I'll be streaming a bit more tonight as I push through 2nd level and inch closer to our next big milestone!

 

[Kalista]

Yeah, they really took some liberties with Kobold on this one - not draconic at all.

Bit of a tangent, but I looked into this a while back, and kobolds were described as "dog-like" in early editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It was around the third edition, presaged by some magazine articles, that they became scaly dragony frens. 3.0 came out in 2000, so our 1999 EverQuest was still working from older descriptions!

 

[Violentvixen]

I was confused about the Kobold thing but because of a local brewery. They claim they're Germanic goblin-ish creatures.

 

[Kalista]

Yeah, that's where D&D picked them up from! The dog thing was itself an aesthetic change from the folklore.

 

[Destil]

Well look at you and your fancy particle effects set to high. My PC could never handle that.

Flare should fire out a bolt to your target to light it up and provide light along along its path, wonder if it's running into the ground in front of you?

 

[Destil]

Also the boats were absurdly brokenly janky. Boats had to zone in and out just like players, and since loading a new zone could take minutes they needed to hang around in the loading area for a while before moving across the ocean (or the players on the boat would just fall into the sea once they loaded in after it left).

It was very common for me to wait 20 minutes for a boat, get onto it and fail to load the new zone in time. Then you have to swim back to the port and try again. Or swim to one of the islands in the sea with a dock, if your swimming was decent that could be faster since you'd avoid having to zone out with it again (and it's not like you don't have 20 minutes until the next boat reaches the dock, anyway).

 

[Büge]

Bit of a tangent, but I looked into this a while back, and kobolds were described as "dog-like" in early editions of Dungeons & Dragons. It was around the third edition, presaged by some magazine articles, that they became scaly dragony frens. 3.0 came out in 2000, so our 1999 EverQuest was still working from older descriptions!

That also explains why Ryoko Kui's Delicious in Dungeon includes a kobold that looks like a Shiba Inu.

 

[nataeryn]

it looks like many elements of starting as a caster in EQ and starting as a BLM in FFXI were very similar, however death was an XP loss, but there were no corpse runs in XI. It sound really punishing.

 

[Cyrael]

I really wasn’t planning on posting much of anything prior to level 4, but some interesting things happened in my session last night that I thought would be worth talking about.

Percii at level 2 has a basic buff (Minor Shielding) that raises her HP and AC allowing her to absorb a handful of more hits from enemies that /con white or blue right now. I was prepared to buckle down and just grind out for an hour or two to try and get to level 3. Fought a few skeletons and some wandering rats when suddenly my chat window displays one of the best messages you can get as a caster:

A cool breeze enters your mind

I turn around and see that my plan of hanging around the Druid Rings has paid off!

Heroes​

A pair of higher level characters (likely in their mid 40’s or so) have come to meet up at this Druid Ring and were waiting for additional group members. To fill their time they decided to pump Percii up with buffs - and this totally breaks the tedium of our 2nd level.

Buffs in EverQuest can be cast on almost anyone regardless of level. When you group with level-appropriate characters your buffs will give you an edge, but won’t make you unstoppable.

Percii with Minor Shielding​

But when a high level character buffs someone significantly lower?

Percii with LIMITLESS POWER​

The spells they cast are typically among the most requested you will find:

• Spirit of the Wolf - You feel the spirit of wolf enter you.
  • Increases your movement speed by a significant amount. It now takes us less time to travel around finding enemies, and returning to a vendor to empty our pockets. If we were heading to another zone it would cut minutes off of our travel time.
• Clarity - A cool breeze enters your mind
  • Incredible Mana regeneration. At our level it effectively means we now have unlimited casting with no downtime. I can blast spells non stop.
• Resolution - You Feel Resolute
  • HP Buff. We now have the HP of a 8th level character, meaning that we can live through combat encounters that would normally be way out of our depth.
• Augmentation - Your Body Pulses with Energy
  • Combat Haste spell. Haste reduces the cooldown of our auto attack by around 25%. More swings means more damage - and while for a casters past a certain level this isn’t that useful (since you may not even have a weapon equipped), it is allowing us to just slice and dice through our enemies.
• Holy Armor - You Feel The Favor of the Gods
  • AC Buff. This lets us mitigate a lot of hits we would normally take. Coupled with the increased HP from Resolution we can continue even when our HP bar looks like it is below 30%

With this newfound power Percii moves over towards a series of Kobold Camps and locates a series of Scouts - enemies that she normally couldn’t have engaged till level 4 or so, and even then not in rapid succession.

Yellow? Not scary anymore!

Unloading unlimited fire!​

These buffs will last anywhere from half an hour to two hours. Making the best of it we can, Percii barely stops to catch her breath in between encounters. I am able to go from barely into Level 2 to halfway through Level 3 in my hour or so play session, and even get revenge on a few of the coyotes that are still wandering around. Also, based on being able to quickly pick up and sell items from the mass of enemies means we had enough money to pre-purchase a lot of the spells we will need at 4th level.

I can’t count on this level of community help most of the time, but I am very thankful for the boost it gave me through these relatively boring first levels.

CURRENT STATUS:​

Level: 3
Location: Steamfont Mountains
Goals: Get to Level 4!

 

[Violentvixen]

Thank you kind strangers! Also your names are fun to say.

 

[Cadenza]

What a swell couple of players these two are, and with excellent character names to boot.

 

[Cyrael]

Going live for a bit as I push through to level 4!

 

[Cyrael]

Next time...​

​

 

[Destil]

“At your service, Master.”

 

[Cyrael]

Sorry for the quick write up today - been busy!

LEVEL 4​

I don’t think that it is hyperbolic to say that this will be the single most important level for Percii. For a magician, level 4 is when they gain access to the first of their class-defining feature of Elementals. For all intelligence based casters, new spells come at every 4th level - bringing along a big burst of utility and power. Additionally, at 4th level we gain the skill Meditate.

Any one of these would be huge, but getting all of them together? Game changing.

First let’s take a look at the list of spells we have. Percii was able to purchase most of these and we will for sure be grabbing the remainder as soon as we can afford it.

• Burn
  • An upgrade to Burst of Flame, doing up to 14 damage on a successful hit
• Summon Elementalkin Earth*|Water|Air*|Fire*
  • Percii’s first Pet spells. We will cover these soon!
• Fire Flux
  • The first multi-target area of effect spell. Creates a storm of fire around Percii, damaging any creature nearby.
• Gate
  • Returns Percii to her current bind point. Unlike other MMO’s, gate can be cast whenever and wherever you are as long as you have enough mana to do so (mostly thinking about Hearthstone cooldowns in WoW). We won’t be able to freely change our bind point until level 12, but until then this is a great way to get back to Steamfont and Ak’Anon
• Sense Summoned*
  • The only highly situational spell from this set, this will point us towards the nearest ‘summoned’ creature. Useful if we are hunting a specific creature type, but it will mostly be relegated to the back pages of our spellbook.
• Summon Bandages
  • Bandages can be used to heal a character up to 50% of their total HP pool by using the Bind Wounds ability. Normally bandages are an expensive piece to purchase or craft, but as a magician Percii can just summon them up for use. We will definitely be training up our Bind Wounds ability in our downtime.
• Summon Wisp
  • Creates an equippable item that we can hold in our off hand known as a ‘Wisp Stone’. This casts bright light, which in EverQuest is a big boost in dark areas - even with our latent infravision. While we will use it ourselves mostly, but there are occasionally players who will request it.

*unpurchased so far!​

Elemental Pets​

As I mentioned earlier, and teased in the quick interim post, at 4th level we gain access to the class-defining Elemental Pets. Every spell tier we will gain access to stronger and stronger pets, but generally they will always be close to our level. Each time you summon an elemental it will randomly generate within a specific level range. In our case, Elementalkin can be levels 4-6. Certain skills can only be used by our top-tier elementalkin, so we can use our Reclaim Energy spell to try for a better one. At this point, most of our level 6 Elementals can use the combat skills KICK and BASH, allowing for more damage to be done.

Unsurprisingly there are four separate elementals we can summon, each with their own strengths and niches:

Earth​

Pet with the highest amount of hit points and highest disease resistance. It also can cast the ‘Root’ spell, causing an enemy to be unable to move. This is generally considered the Tank pet and is highly regarded for solo work.

Water​

The water pet has less hit points than the Earth pet, but is highly resistant to poison based attacks. Instead of the power to Root enemies, Water elementals come with the ability to cast an ice spell. In general this pet has the highest damage output of all of the elements, especially when grouping.

Air​

Air Elementals have less hit points than the Water pet, but very high cold resistance. This elemental will also cast a stun spell, which can be invaluable against spell casting enemies. During idle times it will also cast invisibility on itself. This pet is well suited to groups as it doesn’t draw as much aggro and can use stuns as needed.

Fire​

Fire Elementals have the lowest amount of hit points, but come equipped with a permanent damage shield that will hurt any enemy that hits it. Fire Elementals also are unable to BASH or KICK, but can cast a fire based direct damage spell. This is another highly favorable pet for solo work due to the damage shield.

Pet Limitations​

When we first try to summon our pet we get the following message:

That's right - this is our first spell that requires a reagent to be cast. Luckily malachite can be purchased from vendors in almost any city and are relatively inexpensive. Also, they can be stacked up to 20 in a single slot of our inventory. However, this is now a recurring expense! We will need to make sure we have several malachite on hand at all times in order to summon and re-summon pets. We will also keep some in a bank so that if we were to die we could still get a helpful companion.

Pets also do not persist across zone lines (or logouts) - when I leave one area my pet will need to be resummoned (and use up another malachite). We will need to keep this in mind as we travel and determine if summoning our pet will be worth it for protection. This can be mitigated at higher levels when we have access to Invisibility.

Pet Commands​

Pets by default will follow you and engage with any enemy that attacks you. This works fine, but you can also give chat commands to your pet to give them better direction. A few of them we will use are:

• /pet attack <current target>
  • This will tell our pet to engage with whatever we have targeted and can be useful to engage a foe without having to cast a spell ourselves.
• /pet taunt on|off
  • In a group setting we may need to prevent our pet from taking aggro off of the primary tank. When soloing we want to make sure the pet is the enemies primary focus
• /pet back off
  • Tells a pet to disengage with their current target
• /pet follow
  • Puts the pet back into follow mode
• /pet health
  • Project1999, and classic EverQuest, do not have a separate health bar for pets. We will use this command to see where their health is at.

There are also powerful items we can search out that we can use when we summon our pets that will increase their overall durability - but these will not be within our reach till about level 25 or so.

Meditation​

The second most important part of getting to level 4 is access to a caster-specific skill called ‘Meditation’.

As I’ve mentioned before, the biggest time sink in EverQuest is the amount of time it takes for your health and mana to naturally regenerate. While bandages and healing spells can get your health up, there is only one real way to get your mana to come back faster: the meditate skill.

Unlocked at level 4, you MUST go to your guild trainer and invest at least one of your skill points to unlock it. From there, every time you want to use the skill (which in reality is ALL THE TIME) you must use the /book command to sit and open up your spell book and then press the ‘Meditate’ button. This will put you into meditation mode, dramatically increasing your mana regen time.

This sounds tedious right?

What if I told you it USED TO BE WORSE.

In true classic EQ the default UI was this (from an earlier post)

And with our Book open looks like this...

When a caster wanted to meditate they would bring up their spellbook… and be 100% unable to see ANYTHING other than the book. While immersive and interesting, it meant that in a dangerous area any caster would need to rely on other players to let them know if there was a threat coming. Also, the AI in EQ would take any aggressive monster that would normally not attack you due to your level (say, a level 1 Kobold against a level 40 Mage) ALWAYS immediately attack a sitting character. That means that your meditation could be interrupted by creatures that would ordinarily leave you alone, and further increase your downtime.

In Classic this was initially mitigated by allowing characters to meditate without their books up once they hit level 35.

On Project1999 however, because the UI wasn’t able to be fully replicated this particular challenge of the game no longer exists.

Where to?​

Now that we have access to our Elementals Percii has a few more options open to her. We can stick around in Steamfont for a bit, or start to branch out to other areas on Faydwer.

Kobold Camps​

Nearby the Druid Rings that we’ve spent the last 4 levels are a handful of Kobold Camps setup. These will spawn Kobolds between levels 4-6 on a semi regular basis that we can camp for a while to get a handful of coin and other useful items to sell to vendors. We can stick around here for at least another level or two!

Crushbone​

After we spend time with the Kobolds it might make sense to head towards the Greater Faydark where there are rumors of an incursion of Orcs from Clan Crushbone. We COULD try and get there now, but it would be a long walk back if we died. It might make more sense to wait until about 5th or 6th level.


Where do you all think we should take Percii? Any Elemental you want to see in action?

 

[Violentvixen]

come equipped with a permanent damage shield that will hurt any enemy that hits it.

Does that mean that anything that attacks the pet gets damaged?

 

[Cyrael]

Does that mean that anything that attacks the pet gets damaged?

Yep, any enemy who makes a successful melee attack on our pet will take about 6 points of fire damage in retaliation. Percii will eventually get another damage shield that can be cast on ANY pet as well.

 

[Destil]

My vote is for burning some Kobolds.
Crushbone will still be there at level 6 (I honestly don’t remember how tough the stuff in the entrance is, EQ dungeon design is an ... interesting artifact of its time).

 

[Violentvixen]

Hell yeah, I vote for "how dare you touch me I will set you on fire" pet.

 

[nataeryn]

I am in favor of burninating.

I really enjoyed pet classes in FFXI. My original goal was to become a summoner, but back then it was super difficult.

 

[Rosewood]

I've watched two of the four videos so far. So far, so fun. Here are some comments and questions!

- I don't particularly like how anything looks in EQ--that mid-'90s blocky 3D with the textures painted on. That said, the devs did a pretty good job creating a D&D-like atmosphere and the sense of a huge city and wilderness, and I'm impressed that the game has a day-night cycle.
- It's soothing to watch somebody else grind. I couldn't watch it forever, but a couple hours gives a good impression of the methodical pace of early solo leveling in the game.
- "What do you want your tombstone to say?" FFXI must have copied off EQ's homework with its "[x]'s strength is impossible to gauge!"
- Why do your HP and MP bob up and down while you're sitting/resting?
- To what extent could you change your UI in the days when you were confined to a single 4:3 screen?
- Can your character not equip the weapons you're vendoring? Is she limited by race, class, both?

 

[Mightyblue]

XI is pretty explicitly a follow-up to EQ, given a slightly friendlier play experience. WoW is also an EQ follow-up, and you can see how a lot of the design decisions there are both a reaction against the very hardcore mindset built into EQ and an attempt to polish the genre for mass market appeal.

 

[Destil]

One of the XI dev leads literally said they wanted to make the game because they got in trouble not checking their email while playin EQ, and made a game you can check your email while playing in response.

 

[Cyrael]

I've watched two of the four videos so far. So far, so fun. Here are some comments and questions!

- I don't particularly like how anything looks in EQ--that mid-'90s blocky 3D with the textures painted on. That said, the devs did a pretty good job creating a D&D-like atmosphere and the sense of a huge city and wilderness, and I'm impressed that the game has a day-night cycle.

Where so much of this game is mechanically dated, the visuals absolutely bring in the best that 1999 had to offer. @Destil joked earlier about 'amazing particle effects'. I remember this game just chugging along on my Gateway computer. I do know there is a few fan provided mods that have tried to up the texture resolution, but I am so used to this look the one time I tried it I got turned around too much.

The day and night cycle is really cool! It also makes the vision types more relevant. Humans and their variants can't see ANYTHING without a light source at night. However, one person's 'immersive experience' is many others 'major annoyance'. I've got into the habit of using Perciis Wisp Stone to help mitigate her poor night vision.

- It's soothing to watch somebody else grind. I couldn't watch it forever, but a couple hours gives a good impression of the methodical pace of early solo leveling in the game.

Yeah, and the sad news is.... thats definitely the pace of the game overall! There are some interesting areas, but the most recent video I posted (and will be writing up on) is the basic 'Camp this recurring spawn and just do it over and over'.

- Why do your HP and MP bob up and down while you're sitting/resting?

This is actually a really interesting bug that has been around forever. I am not fully sure about it, but I know that it relates to how the processing is done both on your machine AND on the server. The game engine is based on what is called a 'tick' which occurs every 6 seconds. I believe you see the bounce as it resets itself with the server expected values, but the UI is drawing ahead of time. It's definitely annoying haha.

- To what extent could you change your UI in the days when you were confined to a single 4:3 screen?

With the original UI, you could put custom macros in the lower left corner.... and thats it. With the partial full screen you could move some of the windows around and create multiple chat windows (which I did in mine in order to separate out the combat clutter). I don't think you could do custom skins until he Velious expansion. The developers of Project1999 have been pretty adamant about maintaining a 'classic' feel that they have disabled custom UI outside of the reordering I mentioned.

- Can your character not equip the weapons you're vendoring? Is she limited by race, class, both?

Each piece of equipment has a Slot, a Race, and a Class requirement. Right now most of the weapons I get are locked out by Class. At this level there are 3 I could equip: Daggers, Staves, and uh... One handed staves. So all of the swords and hammers and such I find can't be equipped at all.

Percii can summon a dagger right now that is mechanically superior to the dropped weapons, so anything I find goes right to a vendor.

The two staves I would run into are a Worn Greatstaff(which is 2 handed, and I want to keep that slot open for my Wisp Stobe) or the Cracked Staff. The Cracked Staff is actually a really good weapon at this level, but it also has the highest vendor price of any weapons we can find right now (over 1 platinum, or the equivalent of 2 new spells).

Because our melee is going to be going away as a damage source before too long I am just selling off everything I can to build up a reserve to afford all of our level 8 spells coming up.

Thanks for the comments!

 

[Rosewood]

Yeah, and the sad news is.... thats definitely the pace of the game overall! There are some interesting areas, but the most recent video I posted (and will be writing up on) is the basic 'Camp this recurring spawn and just do it over and over'.

In FFXI--the only other MMO from this basic time period that I'm familiar with--past level 10 or so, people would go to spawn camps (kind of like your kobold camp, but with more enemies that spawned more quickly) and gather in parties to grind XP. The enemies were far too dangerous for a solo player to take on, but their stats were at a point they could be defeated without too much danger to a party. Once you got your party assembled and at the camp (which could take some time), it was far more efficient than soloing for minuscule XP. Did EQ have something like this?

I've watched that last video. Please forgive that I watched it at 4x. Even then, it felt pretty slow! Today's MMOs are lightning fast in comparison.

 

[Cyrael]

I've watched that last video. Please forgive that I watched it at 4x. Even then, it felt pretty slow! Today's MMOs are lightning fast in comparison.

Oh absolutely - they are mostly there for me to get screengrabs later. It is fun to play but I am sure a chore to watch.

I remember when I started WoW about a month or two after launch how incredibly fast the early game could be. I did a free trial of FFXIV a few years back and was also just floored at how quick things happened.

Once you got your party assembled and at the camp (which could take some time), it was far more efficient than soloing for minuscule XP. Did EQ have something like this?

This does exist! Hopefully once we hit about level 8-10 or so we can start looking at some of these aspects of the game. Some of my favorite memories are getting a full group of 6 together and going into places like Najena or Guk to work our way through to a special or unique monster.

There are a few challenges though - again owing to the early MMO game design of EverQuest.

I mentioned before there is no instancing, so if a highly desirable enemy or camp is taken, then you have to find something else. And because communication is zone specific you may spend a long time getting to a place and then finding that the camp you want is already claimed.

The other challenge is that drops are linked to specific monsters, but are not guaranteed. So you may be waiting for the specific item you want. Also, each zone has a specific 'respawn timer' for when monsters will reappear. This is great for a lot of scenarios for EXP camping, since you can usually break up a room full of baddies into managebale chunks that will then spawn in series. But the best enemies often have whats called a Place Holder (or PH for short).

For example: Najena is both the name of a dungeon and the 'boss' of that dungeon. She can rarely drop some VERY good items for Percii, like a Black Silk Robe (gives us INT boosts) or a Black Tome With Silver Runes (Hold it in our off hand to boost our mana).

But if you go to her Zone she may not be up, and instead her spawn point has a PH of a generic enemy. So you fight your way there, vanquish the enemy and then establish the camp and wait for the zone timer (19 minutes in Najena). Then it's just luck if Najena spawns, or another placeholder does.... and when she finally does it's random what is on her loot table.

I think the longest I ever sat and did a continuous camp looking for a specific item was 8 Hours. I am not proud of this 20 years later.

 

[Rosewood]

It's all coming back to me. FFXI had those placeholder type NMs, too. I think they spawned off the placeholders within a time frame, but I wasn't enough of a NM hunter to pay much attention to it. There were placeholder NMs even in the baby zones, and years into the game's life there was still no chance of getting the more popular (aka favored of melee DPS) items such as the Emperor's Hairpin.