Depths of Darkhollow, EverQuest’s tenth expansion was set in the vast underground series of caverns of Underdark Darkhollow, a vast series of caverns beneath Norrath inhabited by the remains of the Illithid Illisin empire and the upstart, warring factions of the Wurine (werewolves). It continued the previous Dragons of Norrath expansion’s effort to reposition EverQuest back to its Norrath-centered fantasy roots after two large expansions, Gates of Discord and its follow-up, Omens of War, took players off Norrath and into the middle of an alien invasion. After all, where could you go when you’d just killed off all the gods of Norrath in Planes of Power?
EverQuest found the answer in Dungeons and Dragons’ tales of the Underdark, the mystic realm far beneath the surface world.
That’s where we found ourselves last night, in Stoneroot Falls. The zone is named after the the huge falls that get their source ultimately in the river that cuts through Nektulos Forest.
Tarfu and Elryndal were on when I got on. We’d decided last week to head to Stoneroot, the 65-70 hot zone, to get some experience after a few weeks bopping around in the Planes of Power. To be honest, though, I didn’t feel the experience in Stoneroot was all that better than it was in the Plane of Fire. It was, though, someplace new.
Coldheat logged on before we headed out, so my cleric mercenary got the night off, a big relief to her, I’m sure 🙂 I felt kinda bad for Coldheat, though.
I’d hated Stoneroot Falls when I played a cleric. It’s a zone full of ramps, water, and crazy shifts in elevation. It is very, very hard to get around in the zone without invisibility and levitation, neither of which were easy to come by for a cleric. Invis potions cost 13 plat a shot in PoK, and levitation — for a PST player in an EST guild, it was unusual to be able to grab a SoE from a ranger or druid before everyone headed out to the zone. The Buried Sea expansion would fix this with guild banners, but that was still in the future.
Deep Orcs in the second section of Stoneroot, not far from the secret entrance to Dreadspire Keep, seemed best for our level on tracking, and we headed that way.
We pretty much made, and wiped on the first pull. Oops.
On the way back, Coldheat died and Elry and Tarfu got pinned down by continual adds in the water. We eventually got it together and let Elry pull with pacify.
We settled down to a good, three+ hour grind after that. I dinged 68, Coldheat got level 64, Tarfu made like twelve AAs (used a potion) and I think Elry said he had over six.
I’m now either at or just beyond the level of my first serious character, my druid Etha. Closing in on my rogue, also named Tipa, who’s 70, and within sight of my highest level character, the level 75 cleric Brita. Still 17 levels from the current cap, though.
I’m hoping we can do some of the easier Darkhollow missions sometime. There were some which were just crazy hard, but others were fun and had great loot.
It was a really fun night. It was great to talk to Lazarretto, who is having fun in his new guild and has started up his own EQ-focused blog, Complete Heal, which everyone should check out 🙂
