I’ve been posting about my Everquest 2 Extreme Quester, Maltheas, for years now. You might ask “But what in the wide world of Norrath, Ark, is Extreme Questing?”. Actually, quite a lot of folks have asked in the past. I told them, and they looked at me with a mixture of fear, awe, and pity. I thought it might be an idea if I actually write a proper post on it at long last.
Why is it “Extreme”? Well, it’s not really. I just like calling it that, but it is quite challenging. Upon reaching level 10, when you can start accumulating Alternate Advancement points, you take the AA slider and you whack it up to 100%. In the bad old days you simply turned off all combat xp, and grit your teeth over the xp from quests. To slow my levelling down yet further I would kill myself over and again to build up a good supply of negative xp before handing in a quest. These days you can turn quest xp off too, but with the addition of the AA slider this is no longer necessary. My Kills to Deaths ratio is still one of the worst in the world :( Extreme Questers tend to die quite a lot anyway though!
Only when you have run out of quests you can manage do you allow yourself to gain a level. How strict you are about this is up to you, of course, but I enjoy pitting myself against quests I have no business being in the same zone as, let alone completing. If new content comes out that’s lower than you are, mentor down as low as possible to do it.
Extreme Questers end up with a lot of AA. Maltheas has 111 AA at level 37, and he did almost 1000 quests before AA even existed. I dread to think how much AA he’d have if he had gained points for those as well, or if the AA slider had been about to convert his locked combat xp, but that is what any new extreme quester can look forward to. You’ll be, for your level, one of the mightiest adventurers around. Of course you need to be, to get the job done! For extra credit and AA, you can try to kill every named NPC in the zone too.
Don’t expect to ever reach the level cap. It’s not entirely impossible, but unlike most playstyles, reaching end-game is not the goal. Perhaps, more than any other playstyle, this is about the journey.
At its heart, Extreme Questing is about taking time to get to know the world. You’ll discover things about Norrath that you would never have noticed on a normal playthrough where you might only spend a few hours before outlevelling a zone.
Why not try it with an alt, and see Antonica and the Commonlands in a whole new light? Solo, duo, or even as an Extreme Team, it’s a whole lot of fun. Join the few. The proud. The certifiably insane. The Extreeeeem Questers!!!
p.s. I can thoroughly recommend the Questlist add-on at Fluffy.dk to help you keep track of your accomplishments, and find new deeds to do that you might have missed.
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