Ald Demo

The first frames i got rid of were the top and bottom stat strips.  I simply had no need for all those numbers being on my screen at all times.  Despite being able to resize and edit which ones i could actually show, i preferred them on my character sheet instead of on my main UI.  Also hid on this screenshot is my maintained spells window.  It's there if i need to scroll over it and cancel anything, but remains hidden until i need it.

My most recent layout changed a few more frames.  Gone are the top player frame and currency windows.  I wasn't happy with the options for the HP frame and the currency was again not needed on screen and better left on the character sheet.  Along with replacing the player frame, i also changed the target and implied target to something a little bit larger and easier on the eyes.

Finally i replaced my cast bar as well as the enemy cast bar and resized both to the length of my hotbars. While the enemy cast bar is not in this screenshot, it's the exact same size as mine and located right above it. Moving to my auto attack bar next, i got rid of the unnecessary text depicting "melee or ranged".  You'll also notice an entire hotbar of my maintained buffs also missing.  They're also hidden until i scroll over them which eliminates more screen clutter.

It's a work in progress which I'm sure will change tomorrow or the next day.  For now, this seems to suit my needs gameplay wise while remaining pleasing to the eye.  I'm sure to stumble upon another piece that i must have but this will last me a while i believe.

I've been running the Nexus Core advanced solo for about a week now.  It seems to be the zone that drops weapons, among other items of course.  What I've been trying to acquire is a sword or great sword upgrade of some kind.  As per my typical luck, or lack there of, I've been cursed with bow after bow after bow.  It's actually kind of hilarious at this point.  I don't even look at the loot chest anymore since it's been a bow of some kind so often.  I'll be in complete shock when a sword actually does drop.  For now, I'm at 7 bows and 3 hammers.

It's official.  I'm now a Shadowknight Samurai after completing the new armor quest chain in Vesspyr Isles. That along with my katana pushes me over the top of ridiculousness.  I love it though so all is good.  Speaking of ridiculous - the stat explosion in this expansion is just that.  I went from 70,000 HP to close to 400,000 in full tank gear.  It's absolutely crazy across the board mob wise as well.  Time to start working on the new advanced solo zones for yet more upgrades.

Also hurray for another new mount from the quest chain as well.  It looks sort of creepy instead of badass or scary but a free mount is a free mount.  Fear the samurai on the back of the froglizardbat flying above your head!

Tuesday marked the release of EQ2's 10th expansion - Tears of Veeshan.  With it came a ridiculous amount of changes to stats along with more stat explosion.  The list of new stuff is too long to list here so I'll just mention the core features.  Full info can be found here.

The new overland zone is a bunch of floating islands, which I've always loved.  Sure it's been knocked a bit for repeating the same theme as the Kingdom of Sky expansion, but it's to be expected.  Let's see if it's as fun as that zone.  Time to completely re-gear and probably respec my AA's.

After 30 days of accumulating daily reward tokens, i had enough to blow on a bunch of interesting items. 

My options were between a few large capacity bags, the seven year veteran reward prestige home, and a selection of flying disc mounts.  There were a lot of other options but none i really even considered.  It took everything within me to not select the prestige house and instead go with one of the four mounts.  I chose the one disc that i thought went really well with Shadowknight.  I'm coming after you, Mistmoore Crags Estate, after another 30!

Another day and another advanced solo under my belt.  This time i ventured into the Sleeper's Tomb instance and i now can see why most people don't farm this one for loot.  Being my first attempt, as well as not being max level, really slowed down my completion time dramatically.  I was making pretty decent time until i hit the final two bosses which i kind of screwed up mechanically.  With good gear and max level, I'm sure i could cut this time in half easily at some point down the road.  Hurray for play speed options on YouTube. 

Thanks to an extremely fun and sometimes crazy Skyshrine group, i managed to hit 95 on my Shadowknight. This makes my first ever max level character of any kind in EQ2.  Despite my actual account being over four years old, i never managed to hit cap at any time.  This was mostly due to other MMO's i was involved in as well as never having the time to really sink my teeth into EQ2.

I suppose i can sort of thank the free heroic character promotion from last month for getting me motivated to play again.  In reality all it did was get me ten levels but that seemed to be enough to get me going and actually stick with it.  The largest motivator has definitely been the doing away with of gear unlocking through the cash shop.  That's just something that i believe held a lot of players back that were not subscribers.  Way to go SoE on that one for sure.

How much am i actually enjoying the game thus far?  Well, enough to go ahead and purchase the expansion. Tears of Veeshan will be launching in less than two weeks and i'm ready to go!  Ready to pretty much replace all the gear I've acquired through running all these advanced solo instances.  The raiders I'm sure have it much worse which is why I'm glad that i will not be getting involved in that yet or probably at all.  For pre-ordering the expansion, i got a pretty snazzy new cape. Bring on the new grind!

Continuing my journey through the signature quest timeline brought me to Temple of the Faceless advanced solo instance.  While i briefly watched a quick video before entering, i obviously didn't pay any attention to the final boss mechanics!  I enjoyed a few deaths followed by a massive face-palm after i realized what i was doing wrong.  My basic dragon bashing to-do and not to-do list finally came back to me.  It had something to do with it's breath and not standing in it.

Along with the buffs and pet, the quest chain also rewards a few altars to pray at which are placed in your home.  Doing so pulls up an option window to select one of the ten buffs i mentioned earlier.  The final reward is yet another cape which would have been decent at the appropriate level but now goes into my cape collection!  Sorry General Zod, i bow before Anashti.  

Upon hitting 92 and having my fill of Withered Lands, i headed up to Skyshrine for the first time.  I began my experience with the zone by getting my butt whooped almost immediately by a three pack of heroic mobs.  After of few hours of the same stubbornness, i gave up trying to solo and headed back inside the safe zone.  Luckily there were three solo instances to run for gear upgrades, which i probably needed before trying to solo there.

These instances were basically solo versions of the same public map i was trying to solo on but much easier.  In all honesty these are probably way too easy but they seem like a quick way to possibly gear up for other content.  I did manage to die by not knowing what to expect ahead of time mechanics wise but that was half the fun.  Hopefully i didn't embarrass myself!

Also as part of the reward, along with the sword and abilities, came a sword model to toss up on the wall in my house.  Now i need some books to go with all those empty shelves.

My indecision regarding what to do first with my brand new level 85 character only lasted a few days.  The obvious journey would have been to just go and finish the character off to 95.  Where's the fun in that though?  For some inexplicable reason, i decided to start on my epic weapon quest.

Looking over the list of tasks quickly brought me to the realization that i could probably finish the entire quest chain solo and rather quickly.  That was until i saw the faction requirements.  I'd like to take a huge axe to the person that came up with faction grind, i really would.  It really wasn't that bad once i got going though, and with all the repeatables, it went pretty quickly.

I have to say all the running around wasn't too bad, with the exception of all the back and forth nonsense usually associated with this kind of quest.  I had a nice flashback of XI as i ran through underground sewers looking for specific mobs to kill.  Why are these zones extinct in recent MMO's?  I absolutely love and hate them but an MMO is more fun overall with them.

The only bit of trouble that i did have was at around the end of the chain.  One of the parts required clicking of an object while a heroic mob was beating on me, which made it impossible without being interrupted.  Other than that, i rather enjoyed the quest and the weapon as well.  It's a shame that the free weapons everyone received completely blows it out of the water start wise.  The extra effects seem really nice though so hopefully they can somehow make up for them.

I'm sure this is a rather silly quest for any EQ2 vet, but as a somewhat new player i enjoyed it still!  Whether or not I'll actually use it or continue on to the upgraded version is up in the air.  If it's possible without any actual raiding requirements, then I'm all in.

Dreadknight's Stalwart Armor Set
 

Coldain Pegasus

If the EQ Next reveal did anything for me, it had me hopping back into EQ2 for a few days.  Despite never having a max level character, there's just something about this game that always has me hopping back on from time to time.  It's usually the fantastic housing system that gets me but this time it happened to be a few public dungeons.  I love them despite their obvious limitations when it comes to providing every player an opportunity.  I enjoy seeing other players out in the world instead of sitting in town or in some instance separated from everyone else.

I hopped on my 75 Shadowknight, which i absolutely love with a passion, and headed to Sanctum of the Scaleborn for some exp.  The dungeon itself being level 65'ish allowed me to chronomage down for the first time.  Yet another mechanic i love which is essentially a solo level sync option.  I really had no idea what to expect with this being my first time trying to solo a heroic public dungeon.  I'm sure my terrible FTP gear and skill options didn't help either, but my class made up for any shortcomings.  SK's are just ridiculous solo tank and AoE machines with tons of life leeches.

After getting the hang of things, i headed over to my proper level dungeon in Palace of the Awakened.  The general consensus was that this would be the best place to solo grind at my level.  While that seemed to be the case, i found myself more interested in exploring the layout than anything else.  I really enjoy the wall climbing aspect of all things!  After clearing my way to the top floor, i was greeted with a little surprise at the end.

All in all, i really enjoy the public dungeon aspect of the game.  I'd love for this system to be made at least an option in future MMO's.  I'm also realistic and understand this cannot be the main concept of dungeons moving forward as it would be abused to no end.  It's still a nice option that I'd like to see in every "zone" as an alternative to solo questing and instanced dungeons.  Call it an elite are or heroic area if you will but incorporate it into my game.

EQ2, on the other hand, is absolutely ridiculous when it comes to it's housing.  The sheer amount of options and possibilities is mind boggling.  Just by the amount of items in the game, which exceeds thousands on the auction house, you're only limited by your creativity.  EQ2 has by far the best instanced housing system I've ever seen and it's not even close.  I'm talking about actual books that are player made, and lots of them.  I can only hope that another studio takes this and somehow expands on it.

Here's my standard Neriak 7 room house.  It's nothing special since i haven't been playing that long but i have managed to acquire some nice quest items such as pets that wander around.  Good thing i don't have to clean up after them!  Although my little whirly-gig likes to fly around and shoot some of them.  My recreation of Stonehenge on my balcony would have made Nigel Tufnel proud.

Prestige housing is in another league way above my capabilities currently, but they show what's possible.  Housing leaderboards allow anyone to visit and walk around others players creations.  I ran across one that i was blown away by called Avi's Iceshard Keep.  Amazing if you ask me.



Hopefully we see more and more studios not only embrace housing in the future, but take it to the next level.  Give us something we're totally blown away with.  Give us creation and building tools.  Give us more non-combat options to entertain ourselves.  More options are always better when it comes to MMO's.