Today is the day of the EQ2 Aether Races! When you hear a bell ring, that’s the sound of a Ratonga getting his wings.
Ordinarily, you don’t unlock the Velious flying mounts until you complete a chain of level 85 quests, which come in adventuring and tradeskill varieties. Little Maltheas is a ways off being able to do either, so he has had to watch from the ground as his comrades took to the air. That changes today, briefly, as the Gnomes hold their new air race, which will allow all comes to engage in aerial daring-do over the the Butcherblock Mountains, Lavastorm, and the Tenebrous Tangle.
Race course signup NPCs are close enough to globe or wizard spire zone-in positions that *any* level of character can participate in these races, despite the courses being set in zones that are normally too difficult for some folks.
Prizes include:
* Cool new titles that show how awesome you are at racing.
* The ability to toodle around the zone in the racer that you used…as long as you beat the course time when racing. (This goes away when you zone or log out.)
* A new mount to use after you complete the Velious flying mount quests! (This is a permanent object and can be used after you complete the Gryphon quests in Velious.)
There are hazards and boons as you race so you need to study courses to get the best times, high-score lists, and more.
We know that there’s prizes, but we don’t know too much about how everything is going to work yet. Remember that these races are for one day only, though they’ll almost certainly be coming back for Tinkerfest later this year.
We’re still waiting for the servers to come up, but I’ll be updating this post with all of Maltheas’ aeronautical exploits, and fresh information! If you check back later, there’ll be video!
6:24 pm GMT
We’re off! Turns out I’m really bad at racing, especially when trying to commentate a video, but here’s a picture of the Butcherblock flying mount to be getting on with.
You'll believe a Ratonga can fly!
Here are the instructions for the race. They only pop up once, and I didnt have time to read it before my first race, and ended up dodging the scary looking golden clouds. Oops.
New C.R.A.S.H. Test Pilot instructions:
The first rule is: don’t crash! If you find yourself grounded, use spacebar to take off again.
Watch out for twisters! The red lightning will sap your engine power.
Definitely look for the floating gas clouds. They turbocharge your prop unit and make you really zip along!
The blue gas clouds vanish when you grab them. That means that other pilots can steal them, so watch out!
The green gas clouds never go away! they have the same effect as the blue clouds.
The golden cloud with the blue halo will blast away the twisters. It’s rare so grab it when you see it!
Warning: If you fall into water or lava, your flying machine is kaput until you get out. The C.R.A.S.H. pad requires a solid surface from which to take off!
Rewards
You get a temporary mount for the zone, and the Test Pilot title just for playing.
I just got the Cloud Buster title for scoring well over in the Tenebrous Tangle race.
The Sea Hawk title comes from Butcherblock.
Smokin’ Ace is the reward for Lavastorm. It also turns out that you might just get the rewards based on how many tries you’ve had rather than your time. It seems a bit random so far. I may have gotten a little bugged on this title, as it turned up in my reward window, when accepting the quest, but I never received it.
Aha! The track specific titles require you to get a decent time. Smokin’ Ace seems to require a time under 55 seconds. Fear not! If I can do it, so can you.
The Crash Test Dummy Extraordinaire title appears to be a reward for doing a lot of races.
Update: So in summary:
“Test Pilot” suffix: Earned from your first race.
“Crash Test Dummy Extraordinaire” suffix: Earned for doing quite a lot of races. 15 perhaps.
“Sea Hawk” prefix: Reward for a good time at Butcherblock.
“Smokin’ Ace” prefix: Reward for a good time at Lavastorm.
“Cloud Buster” prefix: Reward for the good time at Tenebrous Tangle.
You can choose one of 5 differently coloured reward mounts. They won’t fly until you complete the regular flying mount quests, but it turns out you can use them as an appearance for your land mount if you’re so inclined. It looks like you can pick one of these up per racetrack, doing wonders for your mount collection!
The beginning of a race can be rather laggy, as more people appear, so you can help matters by turning down your graphics a little. You’ll want to keep your view distance as high as possible though.
Maltheas shows off his Green C.R.A.S.H. Pad in front of the Tenebrous Tangle Aether racetrack.
Update: There is a video on the way. T’is a 25 minute epic, and won’t finish uploading until tomorrow. Which will make it far from timely, but there you have it. The Aether races have been enormous fun, and rather well done, and you should definitely try to catch them while they’re around.
Rift’s Guardian tutorial area has quite a large number of books to find, and they may be missable if you don’t pick them up, given that I know of no way to get back there once you leave.
That being the case, I’ve knocked up this little map, which will hopefully come in handy for anyone having trouble finding the location of the last one or two. I’ve also marked the location of certain relics of the Gods of the Vigil, which will grant a ten minute blessing if you should (And you ought to!) pray before them.
The map will be a little shrunk on this page, but you can click on it to view it at full size. I hope it comes in useful!
For today (actually yesterday, but it’s still going as I write) only, a free Othmir illusion item is available in EQ2’s marketplace. Technically it only has 50 charges, but as neither death nor zoning removes illusions, it is sufficient to last anyone who wanted to permanently be an Othmir.
Cheeves is pretending that he isn't impressed.
If I had any spare character slots I’d probably create a little ranger or shaman, just to play as an Othmir. Of course, they’re not a true playable race, and your armour doesn’t show on them, but they do have more animations than most monster models do, including the remarkably cheerful wave shown above, and a wonderful (though sadly silent) laugh. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have an animation for either sitting or standing type mounts, so you revert to your normal form while mounted. Also, there’s a lot of different Othmir models, seemingly of both sexes, occasionally in their famously bad hats, and you switch between them each time you zone, which might be a little difficult to explain! Nevertheless, there’s enough there to have some Othmir fun with, especially at low levels.
SOE have revealed what the next few Velious days are going to entail, and it turns out they’re not all going to be quite so screenshot worthy as today’s one was, but they are certainly worthy of mention.
February 23rd is a double Guild xp day. A good day to do writs, and a particularly good day for me to hand in all the status items that I’ve been hoarding for exactly such a day. will it be enough to push the mighty Green Lodge all the way to level 26? Unlikely. I’ll try to get some crafting writs done too.
February 24th will offer free character transfer tokens in the Marketplace, one per character, up to a maximum of five. These normally cost a quite ridiculous 25 dollars each, so I’m definitely going to grab some, just in case, though I’m actually not minding the merged Crushbone-Lucan server too much. Hopefully these tokens will sit happily in the bank without going out of date. They’ll be a great insurance against possible future problems. (Update: Amnerys from SOE popped by in the comments to let us know that the character transfer tokens will only be usable on the 24th.)
February 25th will have “cool prices” on frosty-themed items in the marketplace. I snort derisively at this day, unless the prices happens to be free, in which case I would indeed say “Cool!”. Still, it’s better than a day without a sale, and I look forward to discovering what the next Days of Velious will involve!
MMO players have an embarrassment of riches this week. Of course Rift will be opening up early access on the 24th, but the latest EQ2 expansion, “Destiny of Velious”, launches today, with an 8 day extravaganza of events.
On top of that, DDO will be having it’s 5 year anniversary, with an all-new piratey event recycled from the original tutorial island. I’ll try to catch some of that, though I hope it’s more enjoyable than the Halloween event, which I pretty much hated, and I have heard it is similar to.
With all that going on, where do I find myself?
Zoltoon, meeting up with some old friends in Everfrost.
Aye indeed, I’m still playing Everquest on the Fippy Darkpaw progression server, and have decided, now that the free period is over, that I’ll subscribe for a month. I’m a little surprised myself, though not because I didn’t think it was a good game. I just thought that I’d be unable to look past the graphics and would be a little bored with retreading ground I had very thoroughly explored a long time ago, but after a couple of hours I really didn’t notice the graphics any more any more, and I’m getting real pleasure from visiting the people and places I remember. I’m not the only MMO blogger that has felt this, and Stargrace is covering her adventures in old Norrath quite thoroughly.
As you know, I’m not much of one for raiding, and I never really had the patience for lengthy camps either, so I don’t really recognise the caricature of EQ that is often presented. I always found plenty to do, and kept myself well equipped enough for my purposes without engaging in activities I didn’t find fun.
I have picked up Scars of Velious, even though I doubt there’ll be much in it that’ll make very much difference to Maltheas’ life in the mid-level. At his current rate, he’ll be ready for Velious adventuring quests some time in 2017. He should get to experience the crafting content rather sooner, and of course he’ll probably go exploring the new lands anyway. At the least I’ll need to take a few pictures to show you. I think I’ll try to do a daily post from EQ2 while the special event days are going on. Day 1 is going to involve Othmir, which always make me happy!
I haven’t picked Rift up yet, and I’m still a bit conflicted on it. To tell the truth, I’ve found a lot of the coverage toe-curlingly embarrassing. Often it is kind of like reading someone’s secret love poetry to the girl of their dreams. Also, like true love, people haven’t been reacting well to any criticism of the object of their affection, which sucks out a lot of the pleasure of writing about it. Still, it’s a new MMO, and I’d probably do well to be in at the start of it. On the other hand, I’m not made of money. Once they add the Paypal option I’ll probably grab it as I have some advertising money sitting in there that I can’t use to buy something useful like food without fiddling about with transferring it.
Right. I *think* the EQ2 servers are down for the big Velious update, so I think it’s time to try to get Zoltoon sorted with the Stein of Moggok! I don’t know where I’m going to find the time to do everything I want to this week, but I’ll give it my best shot.
I’m still having fun exploring ancient Norrath again on the Fippy Darkpaw Progression server.
The oddest thing just happened. I was searching for a little information to refresh my memory on the Qeynos Catacombs, when Google lead me to an old post from 2000, THAT I HAD WRITTEN.
The Qeynos Catacombs were always a treasure trove for lowbies, and many of the good folks of Fippy may well be in such circumstances that they could do with a pick-me-up, so I shall share this entry from a very short-lived segment I used to have called Ask Ark!
Hail Ark!
When I met you in Qeynos yesterday you were bouncing with joy over getting your hands on a fine pair of intelligence raising earrings. You said that they (and some other stuff you mentioned, but I forgot) were utterly obtainable for someone of my level, and even though I’m a rogue, I reckon they’ed help my skills improve a bit faster. So, spill the beans. Where’d you get ’em?
Trokkar
Well met Trokkar. They are earings of +3 intelligence, and I would imagine a pair of them would probably have an affect on your skill gains for sure. They are just one of the many treasures that the catacombs beneath Qeynos have to offer, with a little patience, to almost anyone.
The catacombs are a fairly safe area, even for a completely new character. The rats, beetles, spiders, and cubes which fill it are unaggressive, although there are a couple of rare wandering spawns that will attack, and probably kill anyone under 7th level. (Drosco, and a rather nasty skeleton. They don’t show up often though.). The catacombs hold many secrets, not least the headquarters of the Bloodsabers, which lies beyond secret panels in the east wall. Should you find such a wall, I would advise venturing no further through it, unless you happen to worship the foul Bertoxxulous. Only death and decay awaits beyond.
The easiest of the treasures to obtain would surely be the alligator tooth earing, which grants +5 hitpoints to the wearer. These are found without fail upon an injured rat (loc: 566 206), which strayed too close to the nearby alligator spawn. These are perhaps as tough as a large rat, though be warned that other rats may assist them.
The limestone ring, which also grants +5 hitpoints, is found on the undead knight (loc: 664 146). He is little more fearsome than a decaying skeleton, though his aquatic lair is hard to find by mere chance.
Now we come to that foulest of creatures, Cuburt. The child-eating cube lurks upon a platform on the east side. Should Cuburt not be present when you arrive, slaying any beast which refuses to stand still, typically either a sewer rat, cube, or mangy rat, will bring the knave out soon enough. The spawn point for Cuburt and his placeholders is a brown spot (loc: 133 -62) on the floor perilously close to the Frogloks. Upon his death, if you are lucky, you will find evidence of crimes. Should you give this to Zamel, who stand near the bank, you may be rewarded by a gold stud earing of int +3, or a hematite, if unlucky. Alternatively you may give it to Guard Elond, near the gate for a golden locket with 5 charges of courage.
The Frogloks I mentioned will not attack unless you get foolishly close (I got as close as I wanted to taking that screenshot.), but are a trio, so should not be tackled lightly. They lurk in an underwater bit mere yards from Cuburt’s spawn point. They occasionally drop netted armour, which is magical, and most useful for younger casters and monks, especially the gloves in the latter case, as their magical aura will allow unarmed attacks to harm wisps and other entities requiring magical weapons..
Finally, there is a chamber where two interesting creatures may be found. The nesting (loc: 342 334) rat will drop a golden locket which is not only +3 charisma, but AC 2 to boot. The nesting rat is no great threat, but be warned that from time to time, Drosco the zombie may arrive.
Drosco is sad evidence of the dangers of crossing the Bloodsabers, and is bound to their service. Should you have been working against them, Drosco will attack, as I learnt to my cost shortly after speaking to you. Previously he had not been aggressive when we met, but I suppose I have been a bit of a nuisance to the local gnolls. Be warned. He is rather poisonous, and hits hard, but I do believe I saw an amulet of thunder swinging around his neck as I lapsed into unconsiousness. I am sure that the House of Thunder would reward it’s return. Alternatively you could keep it, I suppose.
To a tailor such as yourself, it might be of interest that the spiders of the sewers are no more powerful than spiderlings, yet their silk is of the sort suitable for weaving into clothes. An excellent way to practice the art of tailoring in the Qeynos area without upsetting Holly and Cros.– Arkenor
I’ve been getting a little excited about the launch of the upcoming Everquest Progression Server, due to arrive tomorrow. I’m not sure if this will survive contact with the actual server itself, but for now I’ve been looking about trying to find out everything I can about how it will work. To reiterate, a progression server returns EQ to as close to its original form as possible, and then slowly the expansions are added as certain requirements are met. This is what I’ve gathered so far from my investigations:
Zones which have had their physical geometry revamped will be in their new state. This will include Freeport, to the dismay of all. I think the other zones this will affect are Steamfont, Misty Thicket, North and South Ro and the Oasis of Marr, Lavastorm, Highhold Pass, Nektulos Forest, Toxxulia Forest and Kerra Isle, and the Commonlands. Possibly Feerott (I can’t tell whether it got a full geometry revamp or just a little tweaked). I shall probably be spending a good deal of time on day one being desperately lost in the Steamfont Mountains. It’s unclear what state their populations will be in, but I would imagine that it’s as close to an approximation of the original as possible.
Zones which have kept their geometry, but had their population revamped, will be returned to their original state, or thereabouts. Splitpaw will be in its level 30 incarnation.
Certain zones were added to Everquest outside of expansions, available to all plauyers regardless of what expansions they’d bought. These will be appearing at the approximately correct time. So, The Hole will be present at launch, as that was added shortly before the first expansion. The Warrens, a low level dungeon that made Odus actually worth visiting, won’t be along until the first expansion by that measure.
Only original races and classes will be available, but race/class combinations which were added post-launch, such as the awesome Gnome Paladin, will be playable. The missing classes will be Beastlord and Berserker. The missing races will be Frogloks, Iksar, Vah Shir, and Drakkin. They’ll be along with their respective expansions.
Compared with the last progression servers, a lot more effort has been put in to making sure that items do not turn up until the correct era. Also, many items which have since been removed from the game will be making a triumphant reappearance, until it’s time for them to leave again. It is said that this might even include the Manastone!
Jewellerycrafting and alchemy have been totally revamped in the live game. Fippy will be taking us back to how it used to work, with the original recipes. Crafting, in general, will only allow recipes that existed in the current timeframe.
Fippy will be using the modern smooth experience curve which eradicates hell levels. A modifier will be applied to that, to approximate the rate of level gain that we saw at launch. The experience penalties that some races used to have will be gone, though races with experience bonuses will retain them.
The Map UI will work. This was added well after launch, but never required ownership of a particular expansion. Many other UI parts are expansion locked and will turn up at their allotted time. For a more authentic launch experience, don’t use the map! Me, I’ll probably end up using it to extricate myself from Steamfont.
The /melody command, AKA Autotwist, will be functional. This is one quality of life change I’m glad of. Twisting was a technique that involved starting and stopping bard songs rapidly in order to get the benefits of more than one at once. It required constant fiddling about, and perfect timing. While it might be said that autotwist removed some of the skill from playing bard, it’ll save a lot of repetitive strain injuries.
It sounds like the ships between the continents will be running, but there will also be newfangled teleporters on the docks for those who don’t want to wait. Rather a shame, in my opinion. Hanging out at the docks and taking the boat used to be quite a social experience.
Spell gain will use the new system where you gain spells every level, instead of getting a large number in one go every 4 levels. Spell damage, and monk unarmed damage, will use the modern values, greater than the original. However, out of combat mana regeneration will be back at original values, making me glad I play an Enchanter.
NPC soulbinders will be present. Originally non-casters would need to find a player to bind them, setting their respawn point. That wasn’t much fun, so NPCs were added to cities and some other locations that would bind you.
When you died in the old days, most of your possessions would be left on your corpse, and you would need to retrieve them. After 7 days the corpse would decay, and any items on it would be lost. The developers have made the decision to not bring that back, though they are considering putting it up for a vote. I’m a little disappointed by this, as it was rather central to the whole feel of the game. You’ll still lose xp when you die, and be able to reclaim some of the lost xp by getting back to your corpse, but I hope they bring equipment drop back. It is not a feature I would want to see in any modern game, but it was core to the EQ experience. (It’s not quite as awful as it might sound, as there were spells that could summon a corpse, as well as a corpse dragging command. Using my illusions to help people get their corpses back was one of my favourite hobbies!)
Like the first progression servers, there will be certain goals that need to be achieved in order to move on to the next expansion. Typically this involves defeating all the most powerful enemies of the current build. Unlike previous progression servers, once those goals have been achieved the playerbase will then vote on whether to progress or not, and will keep voting once per week until a majority of active players are ready. One of the big problems with the last progression servers was that a small number of guilds managed to advance the servers much faster than most people really wanted. Voting should slow things down a little.
If you have any questions, especially if you haven’t played EQ before, just drop me a comment. I’ll do my best to answer, either in the comments, or perhaps even in another post! The server should be coming up around 10 am PST, and perhaps I shall see you there!
The Flowing Black Silk Sash was one of the most sought after of original Everquest items. As it was launch content, rather than expansion, you can be sure that folks will be fighting over it on the new Fippy Darkpaw progression server over the next few months! It will begin in the possession of the level 42 Frenzied Ghouls of Lower Guk, a contested dungeon, so it might take a few weeks, even for the most eager of rushers. The queue will probably stretch all the way to Grob.
I seldom had the patience for lengthy camps in Everquest. Spending hours, or even days, waiting for a rare monster to spawn, instead of his common placeholder, and then hoping that he has the specific item that you want never struck me as much fun. That’s not to say that I have much of a problem with some gear needing that sort of dedication. I’m just willing to leave it for someone else, and find different equipment in a slightly less mind-numbing fashion. I loved Everquest crafting, and I expect that will, once again, be my primary source of equipment.
I expect most of those who will be trying Fippy’s server are old EQ players. We know what to expect, though no doubt the corners of our memories have been softened by time. Those who are trying Everquest 1 for the first time are in for a treat! And when I say “treat”, I mean a harrowing experience which will cause twitter to be filled with wails of anguish as they encounter game systems that have not been fashionable for a decade. I’ll be on-hand to assist with any corpse-runs that may be required.
Everquest 2 mostly did away with the more extreme aspects of camping, though at the cost of making gear feel a bit generic sometimes. The Flowing Black Silk Sash made a triumphant reappearance as the reward for one of EQ2’s Heritage Quests, and it was this quest, “The Teachings of Yoru”, that Maltheas set himself to finishing today! A perilous deed indeed for it would require defeating quite a number of ghostly martial arts monks, all of whom had out-levelled our Ratonga pal.
I was interested in seeing how well I could capture a full definition video of EQ2 (I usually record in half definition for Minecraft), so I thought I’d make a little film of the final battle. It can be blown up to rather high definitions using the little definition setting button on the bottom of the video window. It took a rather ridiculous amount of time to upload as a result, so I doubt I’ll make a habit of that!
