EQII: Monking Around
I found some time recently to play EQII. This was a nice change, since I haven't had time to play anything much for about a month. The character of choice this time was Shau, my barbarian monk. Shau is resolutely not a crafting character, so that I can focus on harvesting (his main reason for existing) and adventuring (so that he can get into the places where the harvesting happens).
A recent patch brought the ability to decide how much of the xp you earn for kills, quests, etc gets channeled into Alternative Advancement points - bascially, access to talent trees. When this happened, Shau was level 30, with about 15 AA levels. So I channeled 100% of xp in there for a while, and marched around doing normal quests while he racked up AA. At 30 AA levels, I reset it to 50% each way, which should, I think, keep his AA and adventuring level about even.
I also bought him a house, which I hadn't intended to do. He was going to get along on sharing Arlynx' place, but it turned out that adventuring - particularly when coupled with Shau's incredible luck as far as the loot RNG is concerned - generates a lot of saleable material. Enough that the standard two boxes on the broker wasn't going to cut it, and with enough good stuff coming in that I reckoned a display box would be in order. So he now has a nice house in Qeynos, with a Fir Salesman's Crate, and all his various house loot on display. Since I don't have nearly enough stuff yet to justify multiple houses, I moved the other guys in as well. So Ephrator is currently snoozing in front of the fire there. At some point, I need to continue changing his alignment so he can walk around in Qeynos without being assaulted by the guard. I hear Kelethin is way easier than Qeynos, but I'm partway up on Qeynos already. Decisions...
Once Shau's AA matched up, I took him off into the Enchanted Lands to start levelling again. He hit 31 very quickly, and is well on the way to 32, which means I'm going to have to talk to Ysharros once more about new gear. Of course, this means he's now harvesting in Tier 4, and once he has a decent contribution to the guild stash going, Ephrator can pick up his carpentering again.
The Hallowe'en content, by the way, was excellent. I didn't do all of it, by any manner of means, but ran the maze twice and the haunted house once, and got all manner of decorations and stuff for Shau's house. I'm looking forward to whatever's in the game for Christmas, or at least $NORRATHIAN_MIDWINTER_CELEBRATION. Seasonal house items make the game a lot more enjoyable!
Posted by Drew Shiel at November 9, 2009 10:05 AM
