The plan was to help everyone get to level 60 so we can start doing some of the two group raids in Kunark, Velious and Luclin — things like Velketor the Sorcerer, Trakanon, Venril Sathir and such. What better way, than through the hot zones? The hot zone for our level was (was) Riwwi in Gates of Discord. Not the best place in the world, but we made plans to go.
Then SOE came out with a new list of hot zones, and Riwwi wasn’t anywhere on it. Plane of Storms was the level 60 hot zone. Perfect! We’ll go to Plane of Storms!
Except that not all of us were level 55 or over, so that couldn’t happen. We went to the level 55 hot zone instead, Old Sebilis.
Old Sebilis had always been on the list of Nostalgic places to visit, but there are so MANY places to go and things to see that we’d just not gotten around to it. Now we finally had a firm reason — we would go there and level.
Back when Kunark was new, I don’t remember OS being all blue and light blue at level 55. I remember going there and grinding AAs there, when 60 was the level cap. But it was all blues and light blues last night, and even with Lesson of the Devoted on (double xp for half an hour) and it being a hot zone, I barely got a level out of it (level 56 now).
Since we had too many people for one group but not quite enough for two groups, we formed a raid and headed down to Trak’s Lair to farm some spells, kill some juggernauts, and see if Trak was up.
Experience dropped to 1% per kill.
That’s still 10x better than group xp per kill in Karnor’s Castle in EQ2’s Rise of Kunark expansion (which was 0.1% per kill). How the devs thought making an open dungeon with (a) no xp, (b) no loot, (c) difficult to kill mobs and (d) only a couple of quests would be the best way to introduce people to the expansion, I’ll never understand. We soon realized that SOE had decided to discourage grouping until the level cap. So Karnor’s was like a giant middle finger stuck in the middle of the Kylong Plains. Ah, bashing Rise of Kunark just never gets old, does it?
If you take a really close look at that screenie, it shows the first thing on my track list as “a fallen monk”, and there’s Sisca laying there dead. I thought that was a funny coincidence, in a macabre way.
Anyway, we (re)learned a few rules about Old Seblis. 1) Myconid adepts really suck. 2) So do Myconid priests. 3) No, they really, really suck. 4) People who flop past you to ninja the one named who was up that would have given one of the enchanters, at least, a cool looking robe which is absolutely valueless to anyone not in a progression guild, also suck.
We finally made it to Trakanon’s Lair. Trak wasn’t at home, and neither was Tolepumj, the enchanter frog who, until very recently, had been on track. Now he was mysteriously disappeared, yet all the golems that guard him were still up. How could that POSSIBLY have happened?
Sigh.
Okay, I NEED to tell this story about Crimson Eternity, my old guild back on Erollisi Marr.
Westleey was the guid’s lead rogue, raid leader, and guild leader. I liked him a lot, but he could rub some people the wrong way. But he was a good raid leader and took the guild much further than any of us ever thought we would go. Nonetheless…
One day, we’d headed down to kill Trakanon. Back then, Trakanon and Venril Sathir were on a scheduled guild rotation, to cut down on the race for the two most hotly contested mobs in Kunark. Trakanon dropped fangs for the Veeshan’s Peak key as well as all the Kunark class breastplates. Venril Sathir dropped all the Kunark class legs. So it was important that when CE came up on the rotation, that we drop the mobs as soon as we could, so that the next guild in line could schedule their kills.
It was more a contractual obligation thing by then.
Everyone who was online at the time, about four groups or so, headed down into the bowels of Old Sebilis. Monks split and pulled all the juggernauts from the lair. All that were left were Tolapumj and Trakanon.
Tolapumj, being an enchanter, can sometimes charm people. When an NPC charms you, YOU become an NPC. And, you can be killed by players, like any other NPC. When Westleey got charmed, he told the raid that he better not see ANYONE attack him.
As one, the raid turned to him.
Looked at him for a second.
And pasted him all over the cavern.
—
Anyway, once we cleared Trak’s lair of jugg’s, we split for the night.
Me, Tsukiko and Soaridor headed to the Plane of Justice to get Sejal flagged for the Plane of Storms (and the Plane of Valor) by completing one of the trials. We couldn’t think of any trial we’d want more to do than the Trial of Execution, and so that’s the one we did.
Way back when, until you finished one of the trails, you couldn’t progress to Storms or Valor no matter WHAT level you were. They later let anyone level 55 or over in, and suddenly the Plane of Justice turned into a ghost town. We had no trouble with the trial, finished it first time, and Sejal was the only death. Which wasn’t a disaster, because I had somehow morphed into a level 75 cleric on the way to PoJ.
Afterward, Sejal, Tsukiko and I went to the Plane of Sky and farmed island keys until we got to the fourth island, Pegasus Island. We could have cleared the island, but the weird spawn time for the Keeper of Souls (two hours after the first island mob and all the things it splits into were killed), plus the knowledge that the Keeper death touches and we had virtually no DPS, certainly not enough to kill it before it DT’d the three of us, prevented us from moving on up to the fifth island — to another mob that ALSO death touches.
Next week is Labor Day, so we’re off. The week after — PLANE. OF. FUGGIN. STORMS. Or maybe Blackfeather Roost.
Ack no, not Blackfeather…I hear SOE took it off of the list of hotzones mysteriously… Storms it is!