EverQuest 2: On Being An Illusionist
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…
Recent Comments