Epic Dawn

Archived from groups: alt.games.everquest (More info?)

So, I think I'm currently the highest level person in the guild; 30
bard. As its Faire season here, my hours aren't congruent with the
other people playing much, so I'm mostly soloing when I do play, early
morning and afternoon/early evening weekdays, EST, doesn't seem to be
prime ED time.

I've stuck to the ED oath, with a single exception, tucked away in my
bank is my "emergency" wind instrument thats clearly in violation. See,
I died somewhere deep in PC hadn't ever put any cash in the bank OR
purchased a spare flute, and bard invis only works with a wind
instrument equipped. I tried lulling my way in and died again, and was
griping about my own stupidity in /ooc in POK while deciding where I
could most quickly kill enough newbie mobs while naked to afford a spare
flute when out of the blue another bard opens a trade window and hands
me one. Well, what the hell, thats a gold or two, no biggie, I used it,
put it in the bank as I swore to him I would before going back to
fighting, and thought nothing further of it until a week later when I
happened to be sorting thru my bank stuff and noticed it was in fact a
Flute of Eternal Night, with stats and a modifier half again as high as
the one I normally use (32 instead of 22). There are mobs I can
Carrilion to non KOS with that flute, and not with my old bamboo one.
Well, I can't bring myself to destroy it, but at least I leave it in the
bank!

I have mixed emotions about the experiment:

on the one hand, its very irritating knowing that I could be buying
much better gear for practically pennies in the bazaar. That flute, for
example, is apparantly so little thought of that the other bard could
just give it away to a young and apparantly idiotic bard with a lost
body. My original bard used, from day one, a drum thats similarly
better than the one I have now, (walrus skin) which I believe runs
around 500pp in the bazaar these days.


On the other hand, Its great looting things and doing quests and
finding gear thats actually an upgrade. I went and camped the Iksar
Berserker Club, have done most of my newbie armor POK trials, have a
Neth BP I killed the Swarmcaller for, just picked up a Black Steel Wrap
off a Drakkal Wolf... all gear I'd have thought of as junk for most of
the four years I was playing before. (Oddly, the woven frost giant
beard I looted and was excited about was worse than my POK Task mask,
thats one piece I remember thinking was worth getting back in the day)

On the gripping hand, its interesting talking to people I meet about the
idea, some are interested, some say they could never do it, some get
defensive about not doing it... have yet to have anyone ridicule the
idea OR complain about my resulting wimpiness.

Those things aside, though, overall I'm dissapointed, not because of
whether or not its fun to play this way (for the most part, it is) but
because the massive shrinkage of EQ that took place over the 9 months I
was gone has meant that its difficult to get groups; thats good for my
defensive skills, but it saps a good part of the fun out of the game;
don't get me wrong, even if groups were readily available at all times
I'd still solo half the time because I like to... but I'm soloing 90% of
the time, and most of the time I'm grouped has been one or another of
the same couple people in ED.

It seems to me the best solution to the problem would be a good sized
guild with a lot of people playing at all hours (or at least, at the odd
hours when I'm on). But unlike previous characters faced with such a
problem, I'm not inclined to jump ship to a more suitable guild, because
that other guild won't be operating under the ED oath that is the whole
reason for this character.

I've tried another solution, which is making a couple alts at lower
levels, theorizing that when other ED members log on, I'll hopefully
have an alt in their range, so I can switch over and join them. Thus
far that hasnt' worked out either, but then again, I'm currently busy
enough IRL that I'm not going far out of my way to make it happen; even
when someone else is on, I'm likely doing something else IRL and not
willing to commit to the full time attention to EQ that grouping demands.

Sometime in the next week or two I plan to get my son hooked up with a
new computer (his old one is currently hanging on by a thread) and an EQ
account of his own, then I'll start a new alt to group with him; I'm not
sure whether we'll stick with ED rules or maybe use those toons as a
cash sink and task generator for my bard; he can farm "uber" gear for
them off level 30-40 mobs, exp for him and twinkage for them! At any
rate, playing those alts should give some of the rest of the guild time
to catch up to Midi, we'll see if that works out.

Lance
Aka Midi, 30 Vah Shir Bard of ED