My Everquest(updated 11/13-final)--hella long.

ranth · Luke Warm Joined: 16 Oct 2002 Posts: 184

I started playing EQ the friday of the first week of release. Started up as a HE wizard named Rathanos. Was scared shitless to leave the paths in GFay, where i inexplicitly wandered off to a bandit camp, where i spent 15 minutes thinking they were real people and were actually gonna protect me from the evil orcs that kept owning me. How little i knew....

Later i saw the GFay wizard portal, and tried to bribe a GM into telling me what the hell they were for. That didnt work =/

So after learning GFay and LessFay a little i managed to get up to lvl 12 regardless of many many falling deaths off of Kelethin elevators. I learned that mino-axes = $$$ and so tried to spend time getting them, as well as bronze weapons from bandits in Less Fay. This is where i befriended Woden, a barb? warrior ( i think)...he later grew up to be Xammer the True.

Befriended a duo of a druid and a cleric..though i forget their names, we travelled all over the Fays and Steamfont, in search of adventure. My cousin played as well, and was a level 16!!! necromancer by the name of Bermen.

Tired of crowded camps, but too scared to leave for Antonica...i spent many a day killing aqua goblins on the rocks in OOT, which was a great camp, though if you died it took forever to wait for that single boat to come back. Giants were now a whisper of fear in the winds, though i had never ever seen one....and soon my cousin, the uber lvl 16+ necro would be telling me of how he and a bunch of other necros were the first to take down Sand Giants on the server. WOW. I started my own guild with my cousin...named The Legion. Our webpage kicked ass. It didnt last long though as it was too much work for both him and I, so we disbanded the guild after about a month.

After dying repeatedly since wizards were basically p*****s in dresses, even though i had just scored an uber Runed Totem Staff and had my uber purple Freeport robe, i decided the wizard life wasnt for me, and rerolled as Rathan the wood elf ranger.

I leveled faster this time around, and managed to attain a full set of banded mail armor...very uber for its time. I went to Oasis for the first time...saw my first Sand Giant, and also my first Ogres and Trolls. HOW UGLY! HAH FAT! The hot items to have were bronze armor and Combine weapons...you could actually kill ghouls and wisps with them! So i saved and saved and finally managed to be able to buy a combine longsword...but i had to travel all the way from Freeport to somewhere called North Karana to get them....what an adventure that turned out to be! I was now a lvl 16 ranger, and the highest on the server was around 28 i do believe. damn. I became a member of Dreamwalkers, a smalltime guild that really didnt get along well at all, but it was a start.
Polished Granite Tomahawks were a fabled item, though nobody knew where they came from, or how to get them...but EVERYONE wanted one. I travelled out past Qeynos to a little island between Erud and Qeynos, where i farmed wisps for $$.

Often on guildchat someone would complain because they had just fallen down the well in Befallen, doomed.

This is the time when rangers were very popular, since warriors sucked, and nothing else really stood out. Unfortunately....rangers tanking abilities start to dwindle at 16, and i died a LOT. After aquiring the wonderful barbed whip from Najena, dual wielding with my uber Combine Longsword...i quit the ranger life. Rumors of Racewar servers were beginning to spring up so i decided to reroll up a wizard because everyone knew wizards were the kings of damage. Rubicite was a fabled armor to have, though Bronze was still very valuable. FBR's were the hot caster item...though not many knew of who/what dropped it in Najena.

I chose gnome. SO UBER. Ranth was my new name, a short little balding man who could blow the shit outta everything...i loved the irony and eventually loved the toon. This time i leveled VERY fast, and in no time i was 20...i often fished near the waterfall in AkAnon because food was expensive...and i needed to save for spells. The world was growing smaller. No longer was it unheard of to travel from Qeynos to Freeport...many made the trip, and everyone knew to just tag along with a bard and it would be ok. The highest level in game was a warrior i do believe, and he was around 35. WOW.

I teamed up with many friends now. I met a gnome mage...im not sure his name...his father also played though i cant recall his name either. =/ We would kill minotaurs and things of that nature. I also met and befriended a very nice guy named Bindolaf....a dwarven cleric who i talked to up until i quit eq. A bard named Askarii and i (he was also known as Trizat the gnome mage) would go into High Pass and killsteal every orc that spawned(we stayed friends up until i quit). Life was good, xp was fast. I learned of the Cubert spawn in Qeynos Aqueducts, and made a lot of cash selling off the uber +3int earrings he dropped. Occasionally a GM would still announce when somebody earned a last name.

I learned how to be a wizard, and because of it leveled faster and faster. My deficit behind the sub-40s people was shrinking, and i knew where to xp. I camped Jboots in Drelzna room for 22 hours, with Dhartagan(it was his birthday) and Sune. An a*****e gnome wizard whos name i forget tried to KS Drelzna for hours. Xannen maybe? /shrug They were uber deep red con level 35s. /drool. Very friendly.

Now i had uber jboots. I went to South karana and kited aviaks all day and night. I killed the hermit...i killed anything that walked. Never did i ever see the fabled pegasus, though occasionally a human guard guy would come though and wipe out any groups with evil characters in it HAHAHA. Life was good. I would compete with spawns against a few folks...a bard from ED(probably not ED yet)...Mercedez i think..was a guy playing a girl toon. I just for some reason remember him/her darting in and out of the huts. my cousin was now an uber 42 or so...he would come looking for certain drops off the avocets.(class armor quests gave shitloads of xp back then) A druid named Fleece and i would kite stuff together...we were a great team.

Up to now i had left Dreamwalkers. Following in the footsteps of my friend Woden...who now often was playing his paladin Xammer..i joined a growing family-type guild called Crimson Sky. These people were wonderful...very friendly and outgoing... i met a lot of great peeps..including Allerian the Kind, Calmin, Merii, Lambart, Korain, Dreamerr, Kenweil, Ekodas, Jralm, Tamek ...a few others that i remember but not their names..a wife/husband duet that were just so friendly...just a wonderful group. We had a lot of fun...the day i quit DW i joined Crimson Sky...2 hours later actually...during a CS raid of Runnyeye.

I spent time in Lake Rathe and those zones with another group of people...two druids ...one named Dobkin, the other name began with a Z.
Also with us was often a shammy by the name of Chavo. We had a blast together. A mage named Fompea would kill stuff with me out there as well at times.

I remember meeting Dreamerr in the courtyard of Mistmoore behind the lake...her Korain and i chatted often even up until the day i quit. We managed to kill a werewolf on a bad train one day and got Ekodas his warrior BP from the quest armor....he was so happy....it was great =)

I was about level 36 or so now. The first lvl 50 was on the server...some warrior guy who bitched that the best weapon in the game..the Executioner Axe...was all but impossible to get. HAHAHA.

I kept doing my wizardly thing...kiting everything i could with any of my numerous druid friends...or solo. I remember seeing Badmortigan ..the servers highest jewelcrafter on the bridge in N. karana. WOW.

By the time i hit 40 the ubers were trying to kill Vox. I dont think anyone even attempted Nagafen yet. Gold Efreeti Boots were the uber item along with an SMR(for casters). Some silvery axe from Permafrost was pretty uber for tanks. The planes were now introduced, but i chose to not go. Instead i continued to kite barbs out in West Karana, where i would often compete with Rossie for spawns.

I remember meeting my closest EQ friend Morte in the ass/sup room of Guk camping for DE Masks. Was me Ekodas, Xammer, Dreamerr, Kenweil, Morte, Jralm...and a wizard friend named Soma. SO much fun!

I hit 42 and became burned out. i took a 2 month break from EQ.

I returned. Fear was a perma-farm. It was disgusting. My lvl 50 necro cousin Bermen would go to Fear and help break it, but getting in groups was all but impossible. He ended up ninja-ing a cryosilk robe...the second dropped on the server i believe.(Kindom had first right?) The term Ninja was now coined. These are the days Sifl would kite giants and specs up and down oasis coast killing everyone. LOL. My cousin would charm specs and walk them around...scaring the bejesus out of all. Khamul was either banned or soon to be banned...and Xinra was gettin shit from the GMs because he was hated in certain circles (i guess.../shrug) Xinra would show off his Uber Ice Comet to me in Lower Guk. wow =)

My cousin and i were determined to get me to 50 asap. Kunark was in development so it was important i hit 50 before its release. We found that the Druid Trainer in North Karana was a lvl 50 mob that him and i could duo...yielding me ALL the xp. Briana Treewhisper was his name...and he took me to lvl 49 in a matter of days. I got 50 off of Seafuries in OOT later that week. Kunark was released.

Sometime either before Kunark was released or just after my cousin and i, from a tip from Sifl, we all began farming Tumpy Tonics. We are the reason that quest was nerfed to shit. I rolled up a troll shaman alt named Ranthok...got him from lvl 1-20 in about 2 days of tumpy tonics. FOR SHAME! HAHAHAHA

This ties up the pre-Kunark days of my Everquest.

Kunark

Kunark was a bit of a mystery....and totally overwhelming. It more than doubled the content, added a shitload of spells and 10 whole levels. I bought Kunark the second day it was released. My first trip there was surreal taking the gigantic boat from Butcher to Fironia Vie. Lag ghosts were abundant. Mobs saw through invis constantly.

Guild chat was beaming with tales of giants and small keeps which could be raided by a single group. This excited my small family-style guild...we had no intentions of being uber but we really enjoyed raiding. Exploration brought the kids in us out again....the Old World was tiresome and dull...the new content kept us interested and curious. We were tired of camping SolB...permafrost was empty except for the occasional pick-up Vox raid...and Fire Giants were still a 3 group raid. bleh. I spent an entire evening mapping out City of Mist with my trusty Eye of Zomm...I was the first to do this.

Karnors was hell on earth. Trains were constant. Sebilis was just a spark in some programmers eye. Nagafen was dying regularly...or at least being attempted regularly. Kunark was too much for Crimson Sky....internal strife aided and eventually splintered the once peaceful guild. I spent my days exploring....taking screenshots....Kunark was magnificent. City of Mist was the hot spot....Klorii spent many a night setting his mug of ale on my head there (an emote he used often on me). I spent many hours here hunting with Morte, Jralm, Rhion a mage, and another who i forget. Fleece also made an appearance occasionally.

Then Sebilis was discovered. A key was needed.
The rush was on...everyone needed to get the Sebilis and so Trakanon's Teeth zone was jam packed. Rangers and Druids became the most beloved of classes due to tracking....many named in that zone fell and it was great....

The hell that was Karnors trickled down and soon became the hell that was Sebilis. Kunark fundamental flaw was clerics and chanters were REQUIRED. This forced many a player like myself to sit at zone-ins LFG for hours. I attained 52 and became disgusted with the lack of groups wanting wizards. I began playing my tumpy-tonic born shaman Ranthok, and leveled him up to 52 in a matter of about a month(thx kunark twink gear). My cousin and i would duo places nobody should be able to duo....just with a necro and a shammy....deep kedge keep, Howling Stones...Kunark was now explored and tired....it soon became a leveling grind. While playing my shammy i found out about spirocs and raptors in OT. I then read an article on Graffe.com about wizard quad-kiting, and became intrigued. Having spent most of my wizard career solo kiting or kiting with druid partners...i knew this to be a window of great opportunity.

Meanwhile my friends Calmin and Myrii from Crimson Sky left and joined Black Company. Calmin hyped them up a lot, and so i grew really interested. The hype proved true. Morte, Jralm, and a few others joined Clan of Shadows. It was funny...for the longest time i was one of the only people trying to get those two damn guilds to cooperate. I mean really...both had great people in them...timing i guess. So i joined Black Company after meeting Rippys and doing a inpromptu 4 man Sky raid HAHA.

So I join Black Company, which i felt was this totally uber guild with so much potential..and i was right. Here i was....2 lvl 52 characters and never been in a real raid situation...only small 1 group incursions. Well leave it to Black Company to break me in...my first week they basically replaced all my s****y newbie gear with decent Kunark gear (my wizard of course!) and i got to kill Venril Sathir, clear Fear, and Visit Hate for the first time. Needless to say i was impressed. The people were great, and i got to know a lot more of em...those that i consider my second eq family....Nexxus, KoverAs, Batugan, Ragile, Adaen, Kuamena to name a few...

The race was on. BC was a guild on the rise...we recruited a lot of quality, dedicated players, and so it was up to me to start leveling like crazy to meet this demand set on all of us to raid more successfully. Quad kiting was a game imbalance gift from the heavens. I lived in OT at spirocs and Raptors literally for about 2 weeks. During this time i vaulted myself up to 57 spending many a day chatting with my friends Tanagra, Solarr, Immerin, Citaria my GM....and a lot of others....apparently quad kiting was on the rise...but im proud to say i was one of the first wave. I taught Xarpolis how to quad raptors...and he was a quick study. I easily outpaced my colleages, and my love of my wizard was renewed with the success. Once i hit 57 though the grind got to me...i needed to stop and so i took a well-deserved xp break of about 2 months(1 of which i didnt log on at all).

BC was focused on Trakanon and Veeshans Peak. I managed to avoid too many faction hits from Talendor/Gore/Seriil and remained indifferent to some spawns inside VP. Because of this i was the corpse puller after a wipe....LET ME TELL YOU its scary shit when you are invis with regular invis spell and you dont know if the mob up ahead is indiff cuz of invis or cuz he likes you....and if that invis poofs you find out hard way....that SUCKS. Unfortunately after all the preparation i never got to go past Hoshkar ...as his damn poison would annihilate our armies time and time again. (that was later revenged though i had already quit for good). Trakanon was my first dragon kill. What a rush!I do believe it was BC's second trak kill..though it may have been the first...im not certain. New Inny was placed in new Hate...i got the killing shot while the b*****d was wailing on me. GG k thx. What a crappy spawn. Chardok remained empty except for a lone zone-out group xping. Crappy zone.

Sebilis gear was God. VP was endgame...but the key limitation really slowed everything down and took fun factor away from the game.

Epics were put in game. Holy shit...if i had a nickel for how many times i asked in guild chat to kill Phinigel with me(glad i had a fishbone earring)....luckily i wore em down and eventually got that freaking staff of him. I devoted all of my time to questing. I would zone into a full-spawn Fear to see if the Golem was up. I was a lucky stupid b*****d...I only died once and at a spot that was easy to recover from. Thats another rush....try running around a full spawn fear when invis works randomly against mobs that also wander random paths. HAHAHA WHEEE. The epic was not competed yet....Arantir's location was still unknown and so i spent a lot of time trying to determine where to go. I was the 3rd BC wizard to posess the epic, 7th or 8th overall. Probably my favorite moment...well perhaps second to dinging 60(on the old hell-level xp system). Most raids hinged around someone's epic...and everyone was eager to help everyone else.

With epic in hand i snagged myself a manastone. That with a manarobe and i was set. Spent gobs of cash on tinkering...at one time i was top tinkerer on the server....but then Fompea or someone else surpassed me because AquaLungs were so damn expensive to craft. Uncredible...so i stopped tinkering since the return was in the red and the "wow" factor was gone.

The xp grind was really getting to me. Luckily i was a wizard, and luckily AE grouping was being experimented with. I absolutely loved the days when Rippys would send me a tell for an AE group in KC basement. That was a guaranteed level for the day. Alshain has mad chanter skills...Rippys could pull the entire castle on our heads and just laugh his ass off about it...all the while his girl Kasey was timing heals perfectly and me and a few select BC wizards were furiously pounding on our PBAoE spells. I forget our record....maybe 17 kills? probably more. It sure as hell beat any groups you could concieve in Sebilis....which was the creme de la creme at the time (excluding certain spots in Howling Stones).

Around this time i befriended an iksar warrior named Slorth, who in my humble opinion is one of the most underrated players on our server. The kid knew his shit when it came to tanking and being a warrior...as well as dueling. He even gave Willis a run for his money while being FAR outclassed in gear.

Some time later Velious was introduced.

PoG and Skyshrine became more popular. I avoided PoG like the plague....i couldnt stand the mindless camping there with minimal return. Siren's Grotto was perma empty. ToV was unknown territory.

The hot camps were the giant fish in Cobalt Scar, and the turtle Lozidal(sp). Velious changed the dynamic of the game...no longer was there a single choke point mob to camp(Trakanon...damn races against ED sucked) ...instead there were multiple factions each with their own boss type mob. This was a nice change of pace....though a bit of a pain in the gnomish ass because i had to PBAoE about 9 billion damn giants to get the dragon faction correct. f*****s.

VP became novelty....nobody ever went because it was a giant pain in the ass to get folks up with keys anyways...

Everyone wanted to camp PoG...GAH that zone sucked ass. Cazic was upgraded so Fear became a desirable raid once again, and not "just for the hell of it."

Dain was the flavor of the week, and many races ensured to kill that little b*****d....always with several newbies in the zone begging for guard drops. Half of Velious was wasted space to BC since we were already above the difficulty level of at least half of the stuff....to this day i have not visited Crystal Caverns nor explored most of the newbie-ish zones. FACTION FACTION FACTION!!!!

So we knock down Dain like every other freaking day(or so it felt like) all the while trying to figure out how to take Sontalak and all those s****y dragons. Sometimes we would just get so bored we would go out there and kill random dragons roaming in WW or whatever the zone was...but the loot always sucked. We heard about Wuoshi so we killed him that same day...not sure if we ever bothered to fight him again.

So BC starts sniffing around Kael, and to tell you the truth...after the first time there it gets old FAST. Dragon Necropolis is also a nice backwater zone that is rarely frequented by the masses....Neb's Warbone is unknown still.

I can tell you right now...to this day i hate ToV....that run from Cobalt Scar through Sirens and WW just sucks so much ass. I mean really....it didnt help that i was a taxi so i had to port to CS, Evacuate through Sirens, and port to pickup_location_x about 100 times a day. I know it was my job but that just means im allowed to complain =p

So ToV became the top priority, as we realized we needed our tanks to get the gear to handle bigger things like Yelinak. Well we did...but the whole guild wanted to puke by the time we finished with that hellhole. It gets a little better when you start taking the dragons in there like Keeper etc...but not by much =p

Some assface in Verant HQ decided to give wizards two cool spells to be powerful in Velious: the Bane Spells. This is ok...i like power...but the quests blew ass....and i never did get to finish dragonbane because Myga is just about the rarest spawn in the history of modern gaming...and thats on a good week. So i got giants bane and used it on Vindi...BC's new b***h. Well i discovered for all my trouble i did about 400 dmg more than usual and it cost me a relatively large amt of money per fight. Morale of the story: not f*****g worth it.

Life became a series of Vindi and Dain raids, with the occasional fart in ToV. ED was working on clearing ToV...while BC was struggling with Sontalak. I think i was just getting raided-out and needed a break. After we killed Statue for the first time i knew that that was it for me, so i looked for some sort of salvation short of pulling the plug.

Word sprang up through the grapevine that Plane of Mischief had been discovered....and that CoS was now there. I had close friends in CoS so tried to lobby to get myself in there, but thanks to guild politics and greed i was denied. No matter....when a gnome sets his mind to something its gonna happen!

Several of my friends and i in BC talked. We knew we could figure it out...hell it was a friend of mine that helped CoS get there...so we gathered our troops and intelligence...it was me, Koveras, Sunrah, Limwee, Barth, Margarita, and....a mage whos name i forget, though she was a sweetheart. Sunrah was a great monk...he managed to get to PoM entrance with the mages corpse and used a rez stick....the rest of us were summoned and that was it. Poor CoS! My CoS friends later told me that their guildchat was going ballistic because BC had just made it to their little secret stash of a zone.

I was elated. No longer did i feel the strain of having to raid day in and day out....i could use PoM as my vacation...my holiday getaway. What a strange zone! The geometry of the place is something everyone must see at least once....the drops on the other hand suck something fierce, but the zone itself is imho the best in the game.

Sadly, Enlighted Dark cleared ToV that very day, and swarmed PoM. That helped push me towards quitting. The zone was camped to shit, and though the little group of 6 of us BC was still able to usually outsmart the ED PoM campers and got some great drops...the zone funfactor was shredded. Now i knew how CoS felt when we arrived =p

After scoring a Wily Warlock's Robe...the second on the server....i had the second best robe in the game on our server(Xarp has the best with the Phara Dar drop). That was it for me...my desire for loot was extinguished finally after 3 years. I had everything i wanted...manastone, manarobe, free nuke robe(sage), uber stats robe, resist gear out the wazoo, rare no drop items that dont exist anymore, epic.....i was complete in my mind.

The next week verant changed the drop rate in PoM, ruining that zone permenantly. That killed it for many of the PoM BC crew, because to us PoM was the last frontier. A few of us quit and moved on to DAoC, myself included.

EQ was a great waste of time. I met a lot of people i dont talk to in real life. I have lots of memories that are nice, but of a fake life. It was a good experience overall, and one that i dont want to ever repeat. I miss chatting with my old EQ friends, and i wish them the best in their real lives...cuz that is what matters. For a time i got to live out my fantasies a'la Dragonlance and Dungeons & Dragons etc etc....that was enough for me.

The purpose of this post was to help me remember, and to let those of you who i knew in game that i remember you all, even if you werent mentioned (Shadwell for instance)...this was but a short essay on it all...to go in depth would take hours and hours.

Thanks for the memories =)

My Everquest(updated 11/13-final)--hella long.

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