Archived from groups: alt.games.everquest (More info?)
Waaaaaay back when Monual was level 9, I took him on a long, long journey
from Qeynos to Fironia Vie and thence to the Field of Bone. It took many
hours (and many deaths) back in the days before PoK. Back when boats
worked. Y'know, sort of.
The reason I did was because I had read an online guide that said the Field
of Bone had lots of undead mobs and would be great experience for my
low-level cleric. Plus I just wanted to see more of the world. I also read
that if you were Kill On Sight to the Cabilis guards, you could bind in the
ruined buildings surrounding Kaesora. Thus I wouldn't have to experience an
hours-long corpse run, either.
I really liked my FoB experience. The other low-level iksar were just
astounded that an untwinked human was hunting there. I got to be fairly
well-known amongst the other newbies there, and had no trouble finding
groups. I could also solo, although the density of mobs in FoB sometimes
meant I had to run like mad for Kaesora - the Cabilis guards wouldn't help,
of course, they'd just join in on the Monual-killing.
I also had problems with supplies. Yes, Monual could summon food - one loaf
of bread at a time, which would promptly vanish when I logged. The other
iksar were nice, though, letting me buy food off of them. Some were even
nice enough to trade gold and plat for my silver and copper.
Still, I had a longing to have good Cabilis faction. It would have been so
convenient to head inside. Killing some of the mobs in FoB gave me positive
Necro faction, but I was still very KoS to the guards.
Eventually I left FoB. As I leveled up, I spent a large amount of time in
Chardok, after SoE reworked the mob pathing so that grouping there wasn't
just a matter of dealing with a never-ending series of trains. Chardok had
a nice XP bonus, too; I remember grouping with a ranger who was astounded
how much better the XP was compared to her outside grouping. Plus there
were some good drops to be had - a nice one-hander that every warrior
craved, a shield with good AC and awesome resists (for the time). I spent
many levels inside Chardok.
The upshot of all that is that I got lots of positive faction with Legions
of Cabilis, the warrior faction inside Cabilis and the faction that
constituted most of the guards. So now I was indifferent to all the
Troopers. Everyone else still wanted to kill me on sight.
But now I could do a faction quest. See, dere's dis guy - Trooper Mozo.
Give him some bone chips and you get positive faction with all the Cabilis
factions except the necros. I had a few stacks from killing all the undead
inside Chardok. My problem was the stupid iksar Shadowknights, who also
guarded Cabilis and who I was still KoS to. I found a guide on the Paladins
of Norrath board that showed a path I could take that would allow me to
approach Trooper Mozo without getting aggro from any of the other guards.
So I carefully followed that path. And, indeed, I was able to approach Mozo
and hand in the chips without incident. Five stacks, handing in chips four
at a time, yielded twenty-five positive faction hits. I hopefully conned
the SK guards, but of course they still hated me.
Consulting the guide again, I discovered it would take 2,000 positive
factions hits - 8,000 bone chips - to get my faction maxed (which would max
to indifferent; I'd never be amiable to anyone inside Cabilis.) That
deflated me quite a bit; there was no way I could farm that many bone chips,
and no vendors anywhere sold bone chips.
I put that quest aside for the moment. I also wanted to work on my necro
faction, which remained unaffected by the bone chip quest. Alas, there was
one and only one way to increase that faction for someone who is KoS to
them - kill mobs. The Forsaken iksar were low-level mobs that wandered FoB,
Lake of Ill Omen, Warsilik Woods, and other places. There was a cave in WW
where about twenty of them congregated. I found that cave and found that
killing them was quite easy. For a while, clearing that cave became my "if
I have nothing else to do" activity. I imagined I would have to kill two
thousand of the Forsaken in order to max out my necro faction, and that
would take some time.
I eventually found other pastimes - such as my smithing quest. Building my
Cabilis faction went onto the far back burner as I did other things.
Then the new Veksar zone was pushed out to all the servers. And I read with
interest of a new faction quest. Turn in four identical steel weapons and
you got a modest boost in all Cabilis factions (except, again, necro). I
decided to try it out. But even though I was 65 and the mobs were only
40ish, it still took me too long to solo them, and they dropped weapons too
infrequently. Plus there are six different kinds of steel weapons they can
drop, so trying to get a set of four identical weapons could take a while.
I tried sitting at the zone line and auctioning that I would pay 25pp per
weapon (hey, I was rich after becoming a GM smith), but that wielded very
few weapons. I did a few turn-ins but made no appreciable progress, so I
gave up on Veksar.
I read about another way to raises faction - there were some high elf
"explorers" in a tower in LoIO. Kill them and you'd get a knife. Turn in
four sets of knives and you got the same modest faction boost you got from
the Veksar weapon quest. And because these explorers dropped the knives
much more frequently - and because there was only one such knife that
dropped - it was a much faster way to build positive faction. Alas, killing
the explorers ruined faction in Fironia Vie. And I didn't want to build my
Cabilis faction at the expense of any other faction. I toyed with the idea
of making an Iksar alt and leveling him up enough to kill those explorers
and give the knives to Monual. But I had been wanting to get inside Cabilis
for so long - it had been years by this point - that now it was kind of a
point of honor. I wanted Monual, and only Monual, to be the first of my
characters inside Cabilis.
Again, building faction was put on the back burner. I did other things,
such as finally getting a few AA's under my belt - for someone who had been
playing for as many years as me, I had pitifully few AA.
Eventually, WoW and EQ2 killed my guild on Drinal. I servermoved, first to
Quellious where two guilds collapsed from underneath me, then to Povar,
where my application to the top two guilds was rejected because I wasn't
flagged for Anguish. While any of the other guilds would be happy to have
me, I just didn't want to go through Qvic / Ink'tuta / Ikkiniz again. It
was wearying and boring enough the first time.
So, while trying to work on getting signets (and failing, ever try to get
anyone to farm the instanced zones in RCoD?), I needed something to pass the
time. I did a few of the DoN progression tasks, and got enough crystals to
buy a new level 61 spell, Ward of Vengeance. With this cast on me, any mob
that hit me took 405 points of damage every third swing or so. With this, I
could solo dark blue mobs.
Hmm.
I went back to Veksar, the first time I had been there in a year. I loaded
up all my soloing spells, cast WoV on myself, and gathered up about five
mobs. To my delight, they fell very easily and with no risk to myself. The
stupid shaman mobs were annoying as they kept dispelling my buffs, but I
found that I could still kill the mobs easily with just self-buffs.
I found that I could clear about thirty mobs every twenty minutes, and about
one in four had a weapon. So I had a new pastime. At last, I could
effectively solo green mobs! At one point, a group was clearing their way
deeper inside. They stood and watched as I ran past them into a corner,
turned, and was hit by a train of seven mobs. A ranger asked, "Need any
help?" then, after seeing mob after mob drop dead at my feet, said "Guess
not." =) Kind of a good feeling; it's not often clerics get to wow
onlookers with their soloing abilities.
I did lots of turn-ins, yet found that I was still KoS to all the factions.
Man, those iksar really hate me. I went to the bazaar and experimented with
the new Buyer feature, but that didn't seem to work so well - no one sold
bone chips to me. I was hoping I would see thousands of bone chips for
sale - heck, I'd buy 8,000 bone chips and turn them in - but alas, I only
saw a few dozen for sale, mostly for 1pp each. I bought up all I could and
did the Mozo turn-in quest again.
It was while doing this that I found that SoE had put in new code that
prevented me from turning in stacks of items to NPC's. Only took them five
years. It almost made me nostalgic, thinking back on all the people I knew
who had lost valuable items due to the stacking turn-in bug. I myself lost
a stack of valuable farmed items on a smithing combine and was quite
perturbed. Why was that so difficult for them to fix?
Ah well, turn-in, turn-in, turn-in. I found that doing bone chips was about
as fast as the Veksar quest. Between getting four of the same kind of
weapon and all the running around trying to kill things as fast as a cleric
can, I spent about as much time as I did turning in bone chips. So I
decided to give up on the Veksar weapon quest and just do bone chips.
It became my habit to begin and end each playing session with a trip to the
Bazaar to buy bone chips. I refused to pay more than 1pp per bone chip, and
saw an interesting applied practice of supply and demand. As I bought all
the 1pp or less bone chips, more and more people started selling bone chips
for more than 1pp. All by myself I was driving up the price on bone chips.
I started advertising in PoK. /auc Buying bone chips, paying 10pp per
stack, will buy all you got. This provided me with quite a few stacks;
necros emptying out their banks, people who had been collecting them for
alts. I bought a few stacks from, of all people, a High Elf cleric. I got
lots of questions along the lines of "Why do you need bone chips?" For a
faction quest. "Why do you need faction?" For fun!
I also got a lot of well-meaning tells pointing me to vendors that sold
unlimited numbers of bone chips. I had to reply that the only time vendors
had bone chips for sale was when players sold them to the vendors. A
surprising number of people were absolutely confident that this or that
vendor had bone chips for sale, but every time I checked it out, I found no
bone chips at all.
I remembered hunting in Kurn's Tower when I was leveling up in FoB. The
place is just rife with skeletons beyond count. So I headed there and
auctioned at the zone line. The place had a surprising number of low-level
people who were quite eager to sell me their bone chips. At one point a
froglok paladin at the zone line sold me three stacks, for which I paid him
30pp. This led to the pally emoting: /em cries. He's rich! That made me
smile. I remember when I played my first character, a dark elf wizard, and
how much of a struggle it was to get enough money to buy food and spells.
High-level people would auction from the zone line, though, offering 2pp or
5pp per stack of bone chips. I remember selling them those bone chips, and
how each platinum piece was so precious to me, representing unlimited food
and allowing me to buy some cloth armor and the like. I'm not certain if
there are any true newbies anymore; I always assume that every low-level
person I meet is an alt of a high-level character. Still, it was nice to
think that I was helping out someone in much the same way I was helped out
four years ago.
Turn-ins, turn-ins, turn-ins. Faction going up, up, up, but slowly. I kept
conning the SK guards, and they kept scowling at me. Finally, after one
particularly long session of bone chip turn-ins, I conned the SK and he...
glared at me threateningly! Oh my goodness, I had actually progressed in
faction? So, okay, I was still Kill on Sight to the crusader, but at last I
had tangible proof of my progress.
Unable to contain myself any longer, I zoned into Cabilis for the first
time. (Okay, the second time. The first time I had gone to help someone
with an epic mob in the sewers. I had seen precious little of the zone,
being led to some underground passageways to where the mob stood and helped
a smallish raid kill it, after which I promptly gated out.) I found myself
confronted by two troopers who regarded me indifferently. I took a
tentative few steps inside, and ran smack dab into a necro guildmaster that
immediately attacked me, with the indifferent guards gladly joining in. I
zoned out and this time invis'd myself before zoning back in.
I looked around, following some canals until I came out into a PvP arena.
An SK guard patrolled the area so I kept invis up and moved deeper inside.
Cabilis seems to be a crumbling city split by canals. I found the
exterminator and dropped invis from a distance. He was indifferent, so I
hailed him and found that he would allow me to do the newbie faction quest.
Scaled pups were plentiful, so I killed a few. They dropped scales very
infrequently, though, so I did a few turn-ins and got some more faction but
then abandoned it - too slow. I used the opportunity to test various
factions. Shamans, monks, shadowknights, and necros would still kill me on
sight. Most of the merchants weren't KoS but would refuse to sell to me.
So I still needed a lot of work. Back I went to bone chips. Bone chips,
bone chips, bone chips. I'd spend an hour every night buffing people for
free in PoK and advertising for bone chips. Stacks and stacks of these
things, and tedious turn-in after turn-in. I was well-toughened by my
smithing quest, though, so I kept persevering.
After a couple of days, I conned the SK guard, and now he glared at me
dubiously! Woo hoo, I was no longer Kill on Sight. I went right up to the
SK guard and he ignored me. Woot!
I zoned in and again went around testing faction. I was now dubious to
everyone except, of course, the necros. I still couldn't sell to the
merchants, but I could bank! I enjoyed walking up to iksar that would
previously attack me on sight. One day, I camped right on the table of the
shaman guildmaster.
I still wanted to be able to buy and sell in Cabilis, so I continued the
bone chip quest. Plus I wasn't quite free to explore - the necros still
hated me, and I was afraid of running into some NPC on Necro faction. I
pored over Allakhazam, but nothing had changed in the past few years. The
one and only way to build necro faction if you're KoS is to kill the
Forsaken iksar.
I went back to the caves in WW. Yup, the outcast iksar were still there. I
also found an underground complex in FoB that contained a few Forsaken. I
experimented with binding myself in FoB just above the underground complex,
then clearing it and zoning into WW and running to the caves, clearing a few
other small groups of static spawns along the way. I found that in fifteen
minutes of constant moving / attacking / gating, I could kill about
twenty-five Forsaken. One hundred in an hour, maybe. Twenty hours of
clearing to get maximum faction, minus however many hundred I had killed
already.
I did it for a couple of hours, but then I had to give up. My app to a
guild on Povar (not the one I originally wanted to enter with all my
ex-guildmates, but another high-end guild) was finally processed and I was
guild-tagged as a trial member. Which means raiding and stuff. No longer
were my evenings just long empty hours waiting to be filled with activity.
Now I had Things To Do, Places To Go. While I was absolutely thrilled to be
in a high-end raiding guild once more, the quest for iksar necro faction
once again had to be placed on the far back burner.
But I could still do bone chip turn-ins at the end of the night. I knew
once I got past dubious I'd be home free. My recollection is that "scowls"
covers a very wide range, "threateningly" is not quite so wide, "dubious"
once again takes quite a few faction adjustments to get past, but
"apprehensive" is a very narrow range. So, compared to the work I'd gone
through to get through "dubious", getting to "indifferent" would be a snap.
I started advertising in PoK: "Casting Conviction for a stack of bone chips!
Or free if you don't have bone chips." This proved to be surprisingly
successful at getting stacks of bone chips. I also emptied the bazaar of
bone chips. At one point I had almost completely filled my inventory with
bone chips. So off to FoB I went, turn-in, turn-in, turn-in, blah blah blah
blah... wait... according to that last message, my faction with Swift Tails
could not get any better. In fact, all my bone chip factions could not get
any better.
Hooray!
I zoned into Cabilis, and indeed, I was now indifferent to everyone there.
It was as if I was invisible, except I could buy and sell stuff. The necros
were still KoS, and some merchants who I guess are on necro faction would
glower at me and refuse to sell. I read somewhere that merchants on faction
would at worst glower at you; this is to prevent them from randomly
attacking people and getting out of position, thus refusing to sell to
anyone. So, okay, no worries, don't need to buy from them anyway.
I was more bold in my exploring this time. Ah, how the proud have fallen,
the formerly magnificent iksar, rulers of Kunark, now unable to repair their
own houses and infrastructure. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.
I poked about the warrior guild, the shaman guild, and the monk guild,
finding not much of interest but still enjoying the fact that no one was
attacking me. I saw the entrance to the sewer complex but decided against
exploring in there for now; who knows what necro-faction NPCs might lurk
inside. Finally, after running all around both East and West Cabilis (and
falling into the canal a couple of times, ugh, how can you iksar characters
put up with that?), I camped in East Cabilis.
Finally, my years-long quest to enter Cabilis is over. It gained me no
loot, no useful new quests, and it's not even a practical place to bank or
anything. But enough of the
ninth-level-cleric-running-like-heck-towards-Kaesora-with-six-mobs-on-his-tail-and-wishing-he-could-run-towards-the-iksar-guards
character remains in me to consider this a tremendous accomplishment. I
have now been to every city in EverQuest and explored it to my heart's
content.
Or have I? Now that I think of it, I've never really looked around Kael too
much.
Hmmmmm.
--
-Richard
Monual Lifegiver
Prelate of Rodcet Nife
Povar server
Waaaaaay back when Monual was level 9, I took him on a long, long journey
from Qeynos to Fironia Vie and thence to the Field of Bone. It took many
hours (and many deaths) back in the days before PoK. Back when boats
worked. Y'know, sort of.
The reason I did was because I had read an online guide that said the Field
of Bone had lots of undead mobs and would be great experience for my
low-level cleric. Plus I just wanted to see more of the world. I also read
that if you were Kill On Sight to the Cabilis guards, you could bind in the
ruined buildings surrounding Kaesora. Thus I wouldn't have to experience an
hours-long corpse run, either.
I really liked my FoB experience. The other low-level iksar were just
astounded that an untwinked human was hunting there. I got to be fairly
well-known amongst the other newbies there, and had no trouble finding
groups. I could also solo, although the density of mobs in FoB sometimes
meant I had to run like mad for Kaesora - the Cabilis guards wouldn't help,
of course, they'd just join in on the Monual-killing.
I also had problems with supplies. Yes, Monual could summon food - one loaf
of bread at a time, which would promptly vanish when I logged. The other
iksar were nice, though, letting me buy food off of them. Some were even
nice enough to trade gold and plat for my silver and copper.
Still, I had a longing to have good Cabilis faction. It would have been so
convenient to head inside. Killing some of the mobs in FoB gave me positive
Necro faction, but I was still very KoS to the guards.
Eventually I left FoB. As I leveled up, I spent a large amount of time in
Chardok, after SoE reworked the mob pathing so that grouping there wasn't
just a matter of dealing with a never-ending series of trains. Chardok had
a nice XP bonus, too; I remember grouping with a ranger who was astounded
how much better the XP was compared to her outside grouping. Plus there
were some good drops to be had - a nice one-hander that every warrior
craved, a shield with good AC and awesome resists (for the time). I spent
many levels inside Chardok.
The upshot of all that is that I got lots of positive faction with Legions
of Cabilis, the warrior faction inside Cabilis and the faction that
constituted most of the guards. So now I was indifferent to all the
Troopers. Everyone else still wanted to kill me on sight.
But now I could do a faction quest. See, dere's dis guy - Trooper Mozo.
Give him some bone chips and you get positive faction with all the Cabilis
factions except the necros. I had a few stacks from killing all the undead
inside Chardok. My problem was the stupid iksar Shadowknights, who also
guarded Cabilis and who I was still KoS to. I found a guide on the Paladins
of Norrath board that showed a path I could take that would allow me to
approach Trooper Mozo without getting aggro from any of the other guards.
So I carefully followed that path. And, indeed, I was able to approach Mozo
and hand in the chips without incident. Five stacks, handing in chips four
at a time, yielded twenty-five positive faction hits. I hopefully conned
the SK guards, but of course they still hated me.
Consulting the guide again, I discovered it would take 2,000 positive
factions hits - 8,000 bone chips - to get my faction maxed (which would max
to indifferent; I'd never be amiable to anyone inside Cabilis.) That
deflated me quite a bit; there was no way I could farm that many bone chips,
and no vendors anywhere sold bone chips.
I put that quest aside for the moment. I also wanted to work on my necro
faction, which remained unaffected by the bone chip quest. Alas, there was
one and only one way to increase that faction for someone who is KoS to
them - kill mobs. The Forsaken iksar were low-level mobs that wandered FoB,
Lake of Ill Omen, Warsilik Woods, and other places. There was a cave in WW
where about twenty of them congregated. I found that cave and found that
killing them was quite easy. For a while, clearing that cave became my "if
I have nothing else to do" activity. I imagined I would have to kill two
thousand of the Forsaken in order to max out my necro faction, and that
would take some time.
I eventually found other pastimes - such as my smithing quest. Building my
Cabilis faction went onto the far back burner as I did other things.
Then the new Veksar zone was pushed out to all the servers. And I read with
interest of a new faction quest. Turn in four identical steel weapons and
you got a modest boost in all Cabilis factions (except, again, necro). I
decided to try it out. But even though I was 65 and the mobs were only
40ish, it still took me too long to solo them, and they dropped weapons too
infrequently. Plus there are six different kinds of steel weapons they can
drop, so trying to get a set of four identical weapons could take a while.
I tried sitting at the zone line and auctioning that I would pay 25pp per
weapon (hey, I was rich after becoming a GM smith), but that wielded very
few weapons. I did a few turn-ins but made no appreciable progress, so I
gave up on Veksar.
I read about another way to raises faction - there were some high elf
"explorers" in a tower in LoIO. Kill them and you'd get a knife. Turn in
four sets of knives and you got the same modest faction boost you got from
the Veksar weapon quest. And because these explorers dropped the knives
much more frequently - and because there was only one such knife that
dropped - it was a much faster way to build positive faction. Alas, killing
the explorers ruined faction in Fironia Vie. And I didn't want to build my
Cabilis faction at the expense of any other faction. I toyed with the idea
of making an Iksar alt and leveling him up enough to kill those explorers
and give the knives to Monual. But I had been wanting to get inside Cabilis
for so long - it had been years by this point - that now it was kind of a
point of honor. I wanted Monual, and only Monual, to be the first of my
characters inside Cabilis.
Again, building faction was put on the back burner. I did other things,
such as finally getting a few AA's under my belt - for someone who had been
playing for as many years as me, I had pitifully few AA.
Eventually, WoW and EQ2 killed my guild on Drinal. I servermoved, first to
Quellious where two guilds collapsed from underneath me, then to Povar,
where my application to the top two guilds was rejected because I wasn't
flagged for Anguish. While any of the other guilds would be happy to have
me, I just didn't want to go through Qvic / Ink'tuta / Ikkiniz again. It
was wearying and boring enough the first time.
So, while trying to work on getting signets (and failing, ever try to get
anyone to farm the instanced zones in RCoD?), I needed something to pass the
time. I did a few of the DoN progression tasks, and got enough crystals to
buy a new level 61 spell, Ward of Vengeance. With this cast on me, any mob
that hit me took 405 points of damage every third swing or so. With this, I
could solo dark blue mobs.
Hmm.
I went back to Veksar, the first time I had been there in a year. I loaded
up all my soloing spells, cast WoV on myself, and gathered up about five
mobs. To my delight, they fell very easily and with no risk to myself. The
stupid shaman mobs were annoying as they kept dispelling my buffs, but I
found that I could still kill the mobs easily with just self-buffs.
I found that I could clear about thirty mobs every twenty minutes, and about
one in four had a weapon. So I had a new pastime. At last, I could
effectively solo green mobs! At one point, a group was clearing their way
deeper inside. They stood and watched as I ran past them into a corner,
turned, and was hit by a train of seven mobs. A ranger asked, "Need any
help?" then, after seeing mob after mob drop dead at my feet, said "Guess
not." =) Kind of a good feeling; it's not often clerics get to wow
onlookers with their soloing abilities.
I did lots of turn-ins, yet found that I was still KoS to all the factions.
Man, those iksar really hate me. I went to the bazaar and experimented with
the new Buyer feature, but that didn't seem to work so well - no one sold
bone chips to me. I was hoping I would see thousands of bone chips for
sale - heck, I'd buy 8,000 bone chips and turn them in - but alas, I only
saw a few dozen for sale, mostly for 1pp each. I bought up all I could and
did the Mozo turn-in quest again.
It was while doing this that I found that SoE had put in new code that
prevented me from turning in stacks of items to NPC's. Only took them five
years. It almost made me nostalgic, thinking back on all the people I knew
who had lost valuable items due to the stacking turn-in bug. I myself lost
a stack of valuable farmed items on a smithing combine and was quite
perturbed. Why was that so difficult for them to fix?
Ah well, turn-in, turn-in, turn-in. I found that doing bone chips was about
as fast as the Veksar quest. Between getting four of the same kind of
weapon and all the running around trying to kill things as fast as a cleric
can, I spent about as much time as I did turning in bone chips. So I
decided to give up on the Veksar weapon quest and just do bone chips.
It became my habit to begin and end each playing session with a trip to the
Bazaar to buy bone chips. I refused to pay more than 1pp per bone chip, and
saw an interesting applied practice of supply and demand. As I bought all
the 1pp or less bone chips, more and more people started selling bone chips
for more than 1pp. All by myself I was driving up the price on bone chips.
I started advertising in PoK. /auc Buying bone chips, paying 10pp per
stack, will buy all you got. This provided me with quite a few stacks;
necros emptying out their banks, people who had been collecting them for
alts. I bought a few stacks from, of all people, a High Elf cleric. I got
lots of questions along the lines of "Why do you need bone chips?" For a
faction quest. "Why do you need faction?" For fun!
I also got a lot of well-meaning tells pointing me to vendors that sold
unlimited numbers of bone chips. I had to reply that the only time vendors
had bone chips for sale was when players sold them to the vendors. A
surprising number of people were absolutely confident that this or that
vendor had bone chips for sale, but every time I checked it out, I found no
bone chips at all.
I remembered hunting in Kurn's Tower when I was leveling up in FoB. The
place is just rife with skeletons beyond count. So I headed there and
auctioned at the zone line. The place had a surprising number of low-level
people who were quite eager to sell me their bone chips. At one point a
froglok paladin at the zone line sold me three stacks, for which I paid him
30pp. This led to the pally emoting: /em cries. He's rich! That made me
smile. I remember when I played my first character, a dark elf wizard, and
how much of a struggle it was to get enough money to buy food and spells.
High-level people would auction from the zone line, though, offering 2pp or
5pp per stack of bone chips. I remember selling them those bone chips, and
how each platinum piece was so precious to me, representing unlimited food
and allowing me to buy some cloth armor and the like. I'm not certain if
there are any true newbies anymore; I always assume that every low-level
person I meet is an alt of a high-level character. Still, it was nice to
think that I was helping out someone in much the same way I was helped out
four years ago.
Turn-ins, turn-ins, turn-ins. Faction going up, up, up, but slowly. I kept
conning the SK guards, and they kept scowling at me. Finally, after one
particularly long session of bone chip turn-ins, I conned the SK and he...
glared at me threateningly! Oh my goodness, I had actually progressed in
faction? So, okay, I was still Kill on Sight to the crusader, but at last I
had tangible proof of my progress.
Unable to contain myself any longer, I zoned into Cabilis for the first
time. (Okay, the second time. The first time I had gone to help someone
with an epic mob in the sewers. I had seen precious little of the zone,
being led to some underground passageways to where the mob stood and helped
a smallish raid kill it, after which I promptly gated out.) I found myself
confronted by two troopers who regarded me indifferently. I took a
tentative few steps inside, and ran smack dab into a necro guildmaster that
immediately attacked me, with the indifferent guards gladly joining in. I
zoned out and this time invis'd myself before zoning back in.
I looked around, following some canals until I came out into a PvP arena.
An SK guard patrolled the area so I kept invis up and moved deeper inside.
Cabilis seems to be a crumbling city split by canals. I found the
exterminator and dropped invis from a distance. He was indifferent, so I
hailed him and found that he would allow me to do the newbie faction quest.
Scaled pups were plentiful, so I killed a few. They dropped scales very
infrequently, though, so I did a few turn-ins and got some more faction but
then abandoned it - too slow. I used the opportunity to test various
factions. Shamans, monks, shadowknights, and necros would still kill me on
sight. Most of the merchants weren't KoS but would refuse to sell to me.
So I still needed a lot of work. Back I went to bone chips. Bone chips,
bone chips, bone chips. I'd spend an hour every night buffing people for
free in PoK and advertising for bone chips. Stacks and stacks of these
things, and tedious turn-in after turn-in. I was well-toughened by my
smithing quest, though, so I kept persevering.
After a couple of days, I conned the SK guard, and now he glared at me
dubiously! Woo hoo, I was no longer Kill on Sight. I went right up to the
SK guard and he ignored me. Woot!
I zoned in and again went around testing faction. I was now dubious to
everyone except, of course, the necros. I still couldn't sell to the
merchants, but I could bank! I enjoyed walking up to iksar that would
previously attack me on sight. One day, I camped right on the table of the
shaman guildmaster.
I still wanted to be able to buy and sell in Cabilis, so I continued the
bone chip quest. Plus I wasn't quite free to explore - the necros still
hated me, and I was afraid of running into some NPC on Necro faction. I
pored over Allakhazam, but nothing had changed in the past few years. The
one and only way to build necro faction if you're KoS is to kill the
Forsaken iksar.
I went back to the caves in WW. Yup, the outcast iksar were still there. I
also found an underground complex in FoB that contained a few Forsaken. I
experimented with binding myself in FoB just above the underground complex,
then clearing it and zoning into WW and running to the caves, clearing a few
other small groups of static spawns along the way. I found that in fifteen
minutes of constant moving / attacking / gating, I could kill about
twenty-five Forsaken. One hundred in an hour, maybe. Twenty hours of
clearing to get maximum faction, minus however many hundred I had killed
already.
I did it for a couple of hours, but then I had to give up. My app to a
guild on Povar (not the one I originally wanted to enter with all my
ex-guildmates, but another high-end guild) was finally processed and I was
guild-tagged as a trial member. Which means raiding and stuff. No longer
were my evenings just long empty hours waiting to be filled with activity.
Now I had Things To Do, Places To Go. While I was absolutely thrilled to be
in a high-end raiding guild once more, the quest for iksar necro faction
once again had to be placed on the far back burner.
But I could still do bone chip turn-ins at the end of the night. I knew
once I got past dubious I'd be home free. My recollection is that "scowls"
covers a very wide range, "threateningly" is not quite so wide, "dubious"
once again takes quite a few faction adjustments to get past, but
"apprehensive" is a very narrow range. So, compared to the work I'd gone
through to get through "dubious", getting to "indifferent" would be a snap.
I started advertising in PoK: "Casting Conviction for a stack of bone chips!
Or free if you don't have bone chips." This proved to be surprisingly
successful at getting stacks of bone chips. I also emptied the bazaar of
bone chips. At one point I had almost completely filled my inventory with
bone chips. So off to FoB I went, turn-in, turn-in, turn-in, blah blah blah
blah... wait... according to that last message, my faction with Swift Tails
could not get any better. In fact, all my bone chip factions could not get
any better.
Hooray!
I zoned into Cabilis, and indeed, I was now indifferent to everyone there.
It was as if I was invisible, except I could buy and sell stuff. The necros
were still KoS, and some merchants who I guess are on necro faction would
glower at me and refuse to sell. I read somewhere that merchants on faction
would at worst glower at you; this is to prevent them from randomly
attacking people and getting out of position, thus refusing to sell to
anyone. So, okay, no worries, don't need to buy from them anyway.
I was more bold in my exploring this time. Ah, how the proud have fallen,
the formerly magnificent iksar, rulers of Kunark, now unable to repair their
own houses and infrastructure. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.
I poked about the warrior guild, the shaman guild, and the monk guild,
finding not much of interest but still enjoying the fact that no one was
attacking me. I saw the entrance to the sewer complex but decided against
exploring in there for now; who knows what necro-faction NPCs might lurk
inside. Finally, after running all around both East and West Cabilis (and
falling into the canal a couple of times, ugh, how can you iksar characters
put up with that?), I camped in East Cabilis.
Finally, my years-long quest to enter Cabilis is over. It gained me no
loot, no useful new quests, and it's not even a practical place to bank or
anything. But enough of the
ninth-level-cleric-running-like-heck-towards-Kaesora-with-six-mobs-on-his-tail-and-wishing-he-could-run-towards-the-iksar-guards
character remains in me to consider this a tremendous accomplishment. I
have now been to every city in EverQuest and explored it to my heart's
content.
Or have I? Now that I think of it, I've never really looked around Kael too
much.
Hmmmmm.
--
-Richard
Monual Lifegiver
Prelate of Rodcet Nife
Povar server
Gaining Cabilis faction and doing
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