For someone who takes forever to make even the simplest decision, I can be tremendously fickle when it comes to MMOs, at least until I’ve made a commitment. Elithia, the character I wrote about just one post ago, is gone. Okay, maybe not gone, but mothballed until I need her slot for something else. Instead, I decided to start over with a Ratonga Illusionist. Every time I played Elithia I kept thinking much I’d rather be playing another Ratonga (I have two others, and I really like the race for some reason). The only thing holding me back was the High Elf racial slow fall ability — and ultimately I realized that it doesn’t matter, since it doesn’t work when you’re on a mount anyway.
So, I started over with a new Ratonga Illusionist named Zogan. Actually, he started as a Coercer, since Rats are an evil-aligned race. But that’s no obstacle in EverQuest 2, because you can always switch sides. Being able to change factions is one of the things made possible by not designing a game around PvP — there’s no competitive advantage to being able to do it, so there is no reason to prohibit it.
Changing factions in EQ2 is not hard, but it can be somewhat time consuming. It begins in your home city, where you find a quest giver who is somewhat disenchanted with life there. In Zogan’s case, it was a fellow Ratonga whose tail had been cut off by the Freeport militia for fun. (Oh, the indignity! For Ratonga pride alone, Zogan could stay there no longer.)
The initial betrayal quest involved sneaking around the city by night to investigate the city guard, eavesdropping on conversations and planting Gnomish listening devices. Then, with the help of an expert forger, Zogan replaced the guard shift schedule with a new one, giving the resistance an opportunity to enter the militia headquarters with minimal opposition. Finally, inside the HQ, Zogan dispatched the guard captain (dying several times in the process due to recalcitrant coerced pets), freed a few prisoners, and left behind a couple of explosive devices for good measure. But the mission was not a complete success, for poor Zogan was captured on the way out and summarily ejected from the city (tail still intact, thankfully).
Having betrayed your home city, you find yourself in Haven, an underground town for those who have no home among the primary factions. Haven has no housing and no access to the shared bank, but other than that you could stay an exile forever if you don’t mind having both other factions hate you. Usually, Haven is just a temporary home while you build faction with someplace nicer.
From here, you can gain entrance to one of the other cities by doing tasks for them. You can even go back to the place you just betrayed, if you like. Zogan chose to join Kelethin, the city of the Fae, due to rumors that they are easier to impress than Qeynos. The rumors seem to have been true, as Zogan soon found soon found an Elf who would put in a good word for the low price of killing three orcs in a nearby camp.
After learning the Fae language and exterminating a goodly number of foul-smelling orcs, Zogan was sent to see the Queen of the Fae herself to gain citizenship. Truly, it felt strange to Zogan to be in a place where he wasn’t the smallest inhabitant! Before he could accept, however, he was informed that he could no longer practice Coercion, and would have to take up the related path of Illusionism. A high cost, to be sure, but worth it…
As I write this, Zogan is level 20, having just completed the beginning quests in Timorous Deep and his betrayal followed by a quick change of citizenship to Qeynos. (Kelethin is nice, but it’s too high up in the air, and falling off of it hurts!) I’ve decided to turn off experience gain from combat, so I can play through a couple of areas I’ve missed in the past without leveling too fast. More to come…
Meet Elithia. She’s one of my EverQuest 2 characters — not my main but currently my favorite alt. She’s an Illusionist, in her mid-20s as I write this, and does Provisioning as a trade skill. It took me quite a while to decide on her class, because EQ2 has so many options it can be kind of overwhelming even if you’ve played MMOs for a while. EQ2 has a total of 24 classes, two variants of each of 12 base classes. For example, the Illusionist class is the good-aligned version of the Enchanter; the evil-aligned variant is the Coercer. You can switch between variants, provided you don’t mind moving to the opposite faction.
The Enchanter is, in all of EverQuest, a crowd-control mage. In EQ2 they are a pet class, and this is where one of the biggest difference between the variants shows up: the Coercer charms enemies as temporary pets, while the Illusionist gets a “persona” which looks just like them and casts similar types of spells. This puts the Enchanter between the other two extremes of the EQ2 mages — they aren’t completely reliant on their pet like the Summoners are, but they also don’t nuke as hard by themselves as the Sorcerers. Instead of sheer killing power, they have a large number of ways to disable, stun, and root the enemy, along with power management buffs which help out other group members.
Now, if you’ve ever played in an MMO with me, you’re probably thinking “Rob, what the hell are you doing playing a caster, especially one like that”. It’s true, I like melee, and that’s why my main in EQ2 is a Brigand. (I’ll talk more about him later.) But I’ve found that while I love soloing with a stealthy stabbing type of class, playing one in a group usually ends up driving me crazy. In groups, I’d rather be in the back where I can see what’s going on and react to it.
Allow me to digress a moment, and talk about the Loremaster class in Lord of the Rings Online. One of the reasons I like my Illusionist is that it feels most similar to the Loremaster, which is one of my favorite classes of any MMO I’ve tried. LOTRO faced a big limitation which most other fantasy MMOs don’t, and that’s the relative lack of flashy magic in Tolkien’s world. But they needed a class for people who like casters, so they came up with one which uses crowd control, pets which help you out but can’t tank, debuffs, and even the occasional melee strike to offset a lack of traditional nuking power. What they ended up with was a class that is very survivable as a soloer and is useful in groups, while requiring attention and tactics to play effectively. Enchanters in EQ2 remind me of that play style. (I haven’t found anything that feels the same in WoW.)
It took me a couple of weeks of playing both an Illusionist and Coercer to decide which variant I liked best. The Coercer reportedly becomes a very powerful soloer later in the game, but early on I found it somewhat more frustrating than the Illusionist. At low levels the Coercer’s charmed pets don’t last very long at all — and when the timer runs out, or a resistance check fails, they turn on you. I often found myself not even bothering with a pet, preferring to just root and nuke on my own much of the time. Perhaps I will change Elithia into a Coercer at a higher level when a more complete set of skills, as well as longer charms, are available.
I’d like to try to start blogging about what I do in EQ2, the way some other people write adventure logs for their characters, instead of just talking about design issues or random things I run across. That’s why I picked Elithia to talk about first — my main is at a higher level, so I’ve missed my chance to talk about lower level things on him.
So, what is Elithia up to? As I write this, she has just reached level 26. Her first 20 levels went by in a blur, questing among the Sarnak in the Timorous Deep. The TD starter zone is popular because of the quality of its quest rewards, but even now that the other areas have been upgraded to match it is still an excellent place to start an alt because it has good quest flow and gets you through the early levels at a quick, smooth pace. I like the Sarnak, too — story-wise, they are trying to find their place in the world, and have a very pragmatic attitude combined with a recognition of the importance of history. They’re aligned with Freeport, but I really don’t see why, as they are effectively neutral in almost every way that counts. Unfortunately, this means my Illusionist can’t live in their city of Gorowyn, which is a pity because I like it a lot, especially the housing and tradeskill area.
After leaving Gorowyn at level 21, Elithia finally took up her residence in Castleview Hamlet in Qeynos, and immediately started working on her armor quests. A helpful NPC in Qeynos gives you a whole set of armor, piece by piece, in exchange for you going out and killing stuff. Unfortunately, after getting the gloves and boots easily, Elithia’s next task took her deep into the sewers, which are annoyingly claustrophobic for a tall High Elf like her, and full of curves and little rooms which make combat uncomfortably close. That next piece of armor better be worth it!
To shake off the stench of the sewers, I decided to investigate the strange blue shard in Elithia’s inventory, which seems to have come from the Thundering Steppes. This is the start of the Splitpaw Saga adventure pack, which has a few nice solo challenges that scale to your level. The Splitpaw gnolls enjoy gladiatorial combat, which is why the first challenge Elithia undertook was to defeat their arena champions, a task which she completed without breaking a sweat or dropping below 90% health. (Poor things. Even the ones that weren’t terribly sleepy had trouble moving their feet to get close enough to hit her. Maybe next time they’ll remember to take their afternoon naps before trying to fight!) For this, Elithia received a mounted Dreadsnout head for her wall — still on fire, I might add — and a cute little mushroom pet that makes way too much noise when it walks around behind you.
Next, a sneaky gnoll wanted Elithia to sneak into a rival tribe’s hideout and destroy their supply crates. This was slightly more challenging, as the hideout was quite full of gnolls which insisted on fighting in groups instead of one at a time. Still, the appearance of two identical Elithias must have confused them, because they all died easily, leaving only their boss to be dealt with on the way out. Unfortunately, the boss left behind only a piece of plate armor, which soon found its way to a nearby gnollish pawnbroker.
The last test is the toughest: the Trial of Harclave. Commemorating a great hero, this is a solo trial in which you, infused with a spirit of vengeance and great power, must carve your way through a legion of heroic mobs just as Harclave himself did. Unfortunately, Elithia didn’t do too well here, primarily due to recklessness — while dealing with one group of six, two more groups added on, and even the Spirit of Harclave couldn’t save her from an untimely death.
As you can tell, I kind of like the Splitpaw adventure pack; while it doesn’t have a lot of solo content (it has some group stuff and raids too) the three quests you can do solo are fun, especially the Trial of Harclave which makes you feel really powerful. That, in fact, is where its difficulty comes from. It’s very tempting to get careless and risk an overpull; while you can easily kill one heroic group at a time with the Harclave buff up, adding a second or third group will quickly overwhelm it. I’ve failed it several times, and that’s always been the reason.
Next for Elithia: more armor quests, tradeskilling, and perhaps a Heritage quest or two. Meanwhile, my main, a level 51 brigand, explores the Sinking Sands on his flying carpet, while seeking to become a Vindicator of the Coin…
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